v\ 


LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CAI& 

Class 


The 
Land  of  the  Dollar 

By         - 
G.  W.   STEEVENS 


New  York 
Dodd,  Mead  and  Company 

1898 


PREFATORY  NOTR 


1  HAVE  to  thank  the  proprietors  of  the  '  Daily  Mail, 
for  which  these  letters  were  originally  written,  for 
permission  to  republish  them.  They  have  been  re 
tained  in  the  form  of  a  diary,  as  it  is  in  the  gradual 
initiation  of  an  ignorant  but  unprejudiced  English 
man  into  American  institutions  and  character  that 
any  interest  or  usefulness  of  this  book  must  consist 


57250 


CONTENTS. 


I.  THE   VOYAGE           .....            t  1 

II.  NEW    YORK  .                         .....  10 

III.  WHERE    NEW    YORK    LIVES          ....  20 

IV.  THE    DOLLAR            ......  29 

V.  THE    U.8.N  ........  38 

VI.  BOSTON          .......  47 

VII.  A    STATE    ELECTION           .....  64 

VIII.  A    STATE    CONVENTION     .             .            •            .            .  63 

IX.    NIAGARA       .             .             A           V«  V      V  ^T*        A  *  ^3 


X.    WILLIAM    J.    BRYAN  I    DEMAGOGUE    .  /fc  1.          80 

XI.    THE    CAPITAL    AND    THE    CAPITOL      .        ^fjSUL/  88 
XII.    IN    THE    SOUTH      .  .  .  .  .  .96 

XIII.  SOUTHERN    POLITICS        .....        105 

XIV.  PHILADELPHIA       ......        115 

XV.    AT    THE    SHRINE    OP    M'KINLEY  .  .  .124 

XVL    ANTI-ENGLAND       .....  .        133 

XVII.    CHICAGO       .      ,       .  .  .  .  .  •        144 

XVIII.    AMONG    THE    DAIRY-FARMERS  .  .  .        153 


viii  CONTENTS. 

XIX.  THE    CAMPAIGN 164 

XX.  FOOD    AND    DRINK 176 

XXI.  THE    BIGGEST    PARADE    ON    EARTH.             .             .  18") 

XXII.  OUT   WEST 195 

XXIII.  A    STRIKE  .......  204 

XXIV.  AMONG    THE    MORMONS              ....  212 
XXV.  THE    PACIFIC    SLOPE      .....  224 

XXVI.  THE    ISSUE 234 

XXVII.  THE    HEATHEN    CHINEE  .  .  .  .242 

XXVIII.  ON    THE   ROAD 252 

XXIX.  BUSINESS 264 

XXX.  WAITING 274 

XXXI.  THE    DAT   .......  284 

XXXII.  THE    OUTLOOK      .             .            .                          .             .  296 

XXXIII.  THB    AMERICA*   ......  306 


Or  THF 

f    UNIVERSITY 

OF 

£*'  ircKK^ 


THE   LAND   OF   THE  DOLLAR 


THE   VOYAGE. 

NHW  YORK,  Septembc*  i. 

IF  Africa  begins  at  the  Pyrenees  and  Asia  at  Buda 
pest,  then  America  begins  on  the  departure  platform 
at  Euston.  There,  at  least,  it  began  on  the  blazing 
29th  of  August  when,  an  obscure  and  perplexed 
Columbus,  I  started  on  a  voyage  of  discovery  to 
America.  Men  and  women,  children  and  infants  in 
arms,  the  platform  was  black  with  the  inhabitants 
of  the  States,  hastening  back  from  their  descent  on 
the  Old  World.  The  station  rang  with  their  greetings 
and  partings ;  the  masses  of  their  ironclad  trunks 
swayed  and  toppled  till  they  threatened  to  overwhelm 
Americans  and  Cunard  Special  and  Euston  itself. 
This  was  not  merely  the  beginning  of  America.  It 

A 


2  THE   VOYAGE. 

was  also — what  I  did  not  realise  till  later — the  begin^ 
ning  of  the  Presidential  election.  For  two  months 
already  the  West- bound  packets  had  been  ferrying 
home  the  same  nervous  crowds,  in  haste  lest  there 
should  be  no  room  for  them  later.  Crisis  was  in  the 
air,  and  all  were  hurrying  back  to  safeguard  their  own 
interests  and  those  of  the  country  they  all  adore. 

The  whistle  blew ;  I  jumped  in ;  the  train  started ; 
a  practical  friend  on  the  platform  had  the  happy  in 
spiration  of  hurling  in  my  luggage  in  a  volley  after 
me,  and  I  was  on  the  way  to  America.  The  run  to 
Liverpool  is  very  much  the  same,  I  noticed,  when  you 
are  going  to  America  as  when  you  are  only  going  to 
Liverpool.  I  expect  it  is  different  coming  back.  But 
at  the  end  of  the  journey,  after  the  Mersey  Tunnel,  it 
suddenly  begins  to  be  very  impressive.  Along  silent 
wharves,  across  dingy  streets,  through  dim  warehouses, 
under  huge  dead  walls  crawled  the  train.  I  was  now 
cut  off  from  my  country  for  good,  and  had  got  to  go 
on  with  it,  for  nobody  surely  could  ever  have  found 
the  way  back  through  that  vast  deserted  maze.  Then 
all  at  once  we  drew  up  in  the  bare  Riverside  station, 
and  next  moment  appeared  the  quay  and  the  giant 
Campania,  the  largest  ship  in  the  world.  The  Cam 
pania  is  very  like  any  other  ship  seen  through  a 
powerful  magnify  ing-glass.  The  great  length — over 
600  feet — and  the  comparatively  narrow  beam  destroy 
any  beauty  in  the  lines.  The  vessel  recalls  Alice  in 
Wonderland  when  she  ate  the  elongating  mushroom. 


AN  OCEAN   FERRY-BOAT.  3 

But  two  most  enormous  red  funnels,  with  ventilators 
and  bridges  on  the  same  scale,  maintain  a  due  propor 
tion.  As  a  ship  the  Campania  is  too  big  to  be  regarded 
as  a  personal  friend,  but  she  is  an  unrivalled  way  of 
getting  to  America.  She  does  not  walk  the  waters 
like  a  thing  of  life ;  she  pushes  sturdily  through  them, 
flinging  great  walls  of  green  water  off  her  bows.  As 
to  her  qualities  as  a  hotel  there  is  more  diverse  opinion. 
Her  idea  in  life  is  to  get  you  to  New  York  as  quickly 
as  possible,  rather  than  to  make  you  comfortable  on 
the  way.  Comfortable  up  to  a  certain  point,  of  course, 
you  are,  but  not  to  the  point  of  luxury  nor  of  making 
the  ship  a  home.  The  captain  and  navigating  officers 
live  apart  from  the  passengers ;  they  are  not  dispen 
sing  hospitality,  but  taking  you  swiftly  and  safely 
across  the  Atlantic.  For  the  rest  the  Campania  is  not 
built  with  any  large  available  space  of  deck  for  athletic 
sports  and  such  diversions  as  other  voyages  afford. 
Nor,  indeed,  is  the  time  at  sea  long  enough  for  such ; 
you  are  just  beginning  to  know  your  fellows  by  the 
time  you  get  Sandy  Hook  light  abeam.  Briefly  the 
passage  of  the  Atlantic  has  ceased  to  be  a  voyage,  and 
become  a  ferry.  The  available  space  of  deck  is  occu 
pied  by  serried  ranks  of  deck-chairs,  and  the  ship's  in 
habitants  sit  and  sit,  and  are  sea-sick.  The  casualties 
of  the  first  day  out  were  terrible,  and  not  till  Long 
Island  was  in  sight  were  they  really  salved.  The 
other  main  diversions  of  the  voyage  resolved  them 
selves  into  reading  unimportant  novels  aloud,  by 


4  THE  VOYAGE. 

pairs,  on  the  deck,  and  gambling  in  the  smoking-room 
— the  nobler  and  the  manlier  one.  Also  there  was 
eating.  In  reference  to  eating,  I  hold  that  the  food 
provided  by  the  Company  is  as  good  as  you  can  expect, 
but  this  view  was  not  held  by  all,  or  indeed  by  many. 
As  good  as  you  can  expect — possibly ;  but  does  this 
mean  as  good  as  you  ought  to  get,  or  only  as  good  as 
you  are  likely  to  get  ?  The  Cunard  has  a  noble  repu 
tation  for  bringing  its  passengers  safe  to  their  destina 
tion.  But  I  am  bound  to  say  that  there  was  a  strong 
body  of  opinion  on  board  in  favour  of  a  trifle  more 
chance  of  death  by  drowning,  so  it  were  balanced  by 
a  trifle  less  chance  of  death  by  starvation.  I  do  not 
share  that  view  myself ;  I  am  as  difficult  to  starve  as, 
given  a  thousand  miles  from  the  nearest  land,  I  should 
be  easy  to  drown.  Yet  if  I  am  ever  chairman  of  the 
Cunard  I  think  I  shall  make  an  effort.  The  food  is 
good  enough,  and  there  is  plenty  of  it.  Why  not  try 
to  make  it  nice  ? 

I  observed  no  sort  of  snobbishness  on  the  Campania, 
such  as  you  would  hardly  have  missed  with  a  boat 
populated  with  the  same  number  of  our  people.  No 
doubt  the  American  has  his  veneration  for  the  dollar. 
But  so  far  as  I  have  seen — which,  mind  you,  is  no  way 
at  all  as  yet— he  reveres  the  dollar  as  an  emblem  of 
power ;  and  I  should  hardly  call  it  snobbery  to  respect 
power.  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  see  a  good  deal  of  a 
gentleman  who  was  perhaps  typical.  He  first  won 
my  regard  by  the  rare  art  with  which  he  conveyed  his 


THE  DOLLAR  ALREADY,  5 

utter  scorn  for  the  steward  without  ever  speaking  to 
him.  Then  we  were  thrown  together  as  the  only 
members  of  our  stewardship  who  faced  dinner  on  the 
day  of  sea-sickness.  "  Are  there  any  lords  on  board  ? " 
he  asked  slowly  in  a  half-misanthropic,  half-wistful 
voice  he  had  the  charm  to  possess.  I  got  out  the 
passenger  list  and  found  none.  "  Any  sirs  ? "  Only 
one  sir  was  forthcoming.  "  Ah,"  he  said,  brightening 
a  little,  as  one  whose  country  had  manifested  a  social 
superiority  over  mine,  "  I  expect  there  are  a  good 
many  moneyed  men,  though."  Next  morning  he 
opened  the  conversation.  "  How  much  should  you 
think  this  ship  cost?"  I  was  able  to  indulge  him 
with  particulars  of  the  cost  of  many  of  the  important 
ships  in  the  world,  and  he  began  to  confide  in  me. 
"  That's  a  fine  woman,"  he  said,  looking  up  the  table ; 
"  a  very  fine  woman.  I  should  think  she  was  a  very 
expensive  woman."  Yet,  though  instinctively  he  re 
ferred  everything  to  the  standard  of  the  dollar,  I 
should  say  his  feeling  was  simply  respect  for  the 
power  of  doing  things  that  without  dollars  could  not 
be  done.  And  his  respect  for  the  man  of  dollars  was 
only  a  concrete  form  of  respect  for  the  ability  to 
make  them. 

On  the  morning  of  the  sixth  day  out  from  Queens- 
town  there  began  to  crawl  along  the  starboard  horizon 
a  pale  blue  line.  "What  do  you  think,"  began  the 
wistful  voice  of  my  friend  at  my  elbow — "  but  you'd 
hardly  have  seen  enough  to  judge  of  it  yet."  I  assured 


6  THE  VOYAGE. 

him  that  my  first  impressions  were  not  unfavourable 
and  turned  for  my  second.  As  the  screws  kicked  on 
through  the  dancing  waves,  the  line  grt-w  broader, 
until  it  was  plainly  land ;  high  ground  rose  over  the 
deeper  blue  of  the  waters,  and  presently  began  to  take 
on  colours  of  its  own.  Here  was  a  faint  green  for 
woodland ;  there  a  misty  yellow  for  sand.  It  was  the 
coast  of  Long  Island,  the  first  herald  of  America. 

Then  came  buildings  dimly  outlined  on  the  sky 
line  ;  then  the  same  pale  appearance  on  the  port  side 
also,  which  slowly  shaped  itself  into  the  low  dun 
spit  of  Sandy  Hook.  Nearing  this,  the  Campania 
slowed  down ;  the  lightship  was  abeam,  and  the 
passage  was  over.  Past  the  Hook  we  glided,  and 
then  turned  sharp  to  starboard  into  the  noble  ex 
panse  of  New  York  Bay.  The  great  ship  crept 
deviously  along  the  deep-water  channel,  but  over  the 
wide  sheet  of  scarcely  rippled  water  tiny  launches  and 
steam  yachts  scudded  round  and  round  us,  as  if  we 
were  a  ten-knot  tramp  steamer  instead  of  one  of  the 
fastest  couriers  of  the  Atlantic.  As  early  as  this 
much  was  unfamiliar  to  the  English  eye.  The  coast 
ing  schooners,  flapping  lazily  in  the  vain  expectation 
of  a  wind,  were  all  three-masted  ;  the  ferry-boats  and 
harbour-service  steamers  were  built  high  up  out  of  the 
water  with  large  deck-houses,  out  of  which  protruded 
the  engines,  see-sawing  up  and  down. 

The  great  cities  of  New  York  and  Brooklyn  began 
to  outline  themselves  against  the  clear  sky.  As  you 


NEW  YORK'S   SKY-LINE.  7 

enter  London  from  the  Thames,  you  see  little  but  a 
few  ghost-like  spires,  glimmering  in  a  vast  canopy  of 
smoke.  New  York  and  Brooklyn  stand  out  clear  and 
smokeless  against  the  blue  of  the  heavens.  The  two 
cities  are  profiled  along  the  shores  of  the  bay  and 
the  Hudson  river,  and  a  strange  jagged  profile  it  is. 
Brooklyn  combines  into  a  fairly  even  mass  of  build 
ings,  half  yellow-grey,  half  chocolate,  with  a  fringe  of 
masts  along  the  water.  Then  the  heap  of  buildings 
slowly  parts  asunder  in  the  middle ;  you  see  the  open 
ing  of  the  East  Eiver,  the  frontier  of  the  two  cities, 
and  the  slim  lines  of  the  Suspension  Bridge.  But 
New  York  combines  into  no  colour  and  no  sky-line. 
Here  is  a  red  mass  of  brick,  there  a  grey  spire,  there 
a  bright  white  pile  of  building — twenty  storeys  of 
serried  windows — there  again  a  gilded  dome.  Gradu 
ally  they  disengage  themselves  as  you  pass  up  the 
river  in  a  line  apparently  endless.  The  rest  of  the 
city  lies  huddled  beneath  them — these  buildings,  too, 
many  coloured,  all  uneven,  each  one  seemingly 
struggling  to  shoot  up  alongside  of  the  giants  at 
its  side.  That  is  the  first  impression  of  New  York, 
if  impression  it  can  be  called.  The  truth  is  that 
New  York  yields  no  impression;  the  big  buildings 
and  the  little  buildings  will  not  come  into  the  same 
view.  It  dazzles,  and  it  astonishes,  but  it  does  not 
make  a  picture. 

The  business  of  getting  a  600-foot  liner  alongside  a 
wharf  is  painful  enough  to  rub  out  the  memory  of  the 


8  THE   VOYAGE. 

pleasantest  voyage  and  beget  a  passionate  longing  for 
the  land.  At  last  they  brought  us  up,  out  swung  the 
gangway,  and  we  swarmed  down  on  to  the  crowded 
wharf.  For  many  minutes  there  had  been  greetings 
from  the  throng  of  welcoming  friends,  with  waving  of 
handkerchiefs  and  miniatures  of  the  stars  and  stripes. 
Now  followed  the  embraces  ;  bearded  men  caught  and 
kissed  each  other.  I  saw,  and  passed  on  to  get  my 
luggage  inspected.  The  New  York  Customs  Service 
enjoys  a  world-wide  reputation  for  ingenious  incivility, 
but  for  my  part  I  am  bound  to  say  that  this  reputa 
tion  went  wholly  unfulfilled.  I  consigned  my  goods 
to  a  baggage  express,  which  duly  delivered  dinner- 
clothes  and  sleeping-clothes  at  one  in  the  morning. 
As  for  my  own  vile  body,  I  transported  it  in  a  cab, 
not  to  say  a  brougham  and  pair.  I  had  been  warned 
against  the  rash  experiment,  but  having  no  vaguest 
idea  where  I  was  or  whither  I  had  to  go,  I  damned 
the  expense  and  took  it.  The  price  for  about  three 
miles  or  so,  not  allowing  for  the  rate  of  exchange,  was 
8s.  4d  I  wondered  at  the  time  why  New  Yorkers 
stand  such  an  abominable  imposition ;  but  when  I 
afterwards  learned  that  by  other  means  you  can  get  from 
any  point  in  the  city  to  any  other,  almost  as  quickly 
and  comfortably,  for  2Jd.,  I  began  to  understand  it. 

The  first  impression  of  New  York  life  was  that 
it  gets  very  dark  in  the  evening,  and  that  the  streets 
are  most  disgracefully  paved.  If  you  imagine  the 
stones  of  Black  friars  Bridge  taken  up  and  relaid  in 


NEW   YORK  S    STREETS.  9 

the  nearest  possible  imitation  of  the  upper  surface  of 
a  Bath  bun,  then  you  will  get  a  rough  general  idea  of 
a  first-class  New  York  thoroughfare.  It  was  refresh 
ing,  even  after  only  a  week  at  sea,  to  see  trees  and 
horses.  The  horses  look  very  light — not  to  say  weedy, 
long-barrelled  and  loose-coupled — when  you  think  of 
ours ;  and  I  saw  some  shamefully  starved.  Yet  there 
is  a  lot  of  blood  in  them,  and  everybody  knows  what 
the  American  trotter  can  do.  We  drove  through  the 
falling  dusk,  and  at  first  I  thought  the  streets  of  New 
York  singularly  mean.  They  recalled  the  last  bit 
of  the  railway  journey  at  Liverpool — deserted  ways  and 
dead  walls.  But  we  were  only  passing  through  cross- 
streets.  Presently  we  flashed  into  a  blaze  of  electric 
light.  A  tram-car  bore  down  on  us,  without  any  visi 
ble  means  of  propulsion,  swift  and  noiseless ;  it  looked 
more  like  a  gliding  reptile  than  a  machine.  Then  we 
rattled  into  a  broad  avenue,  down  the  long  middle  of 
which  ran  a  sort  of  arcade,  supported  on  iron  uprights. 
As  the  cab  passed  under  it  a  couple  of  railway  trains 
rushed  overhead  and  rumbled  away  up  and  down  the 
street.  Not  a  featureless  city,  after  all,  New  York. 
So  we  arrived  at  the  Waldorf  Hotel,  a  palace  of  marble 
and  glass,  gold  and  greenery.  On  sight,  I  was  ad 
judged  worthy  of  Eoom  827,  though  if  they  had  known 
the  poverty  of  my  luggage,  judged  by  the  American 
standard,  who  knows  but  what  I  should  have  been 
banished  to  8000  or  so  ?  From  827,  therefore,  I  pro 
ceed  to  the  conquest  of  New  York. 


10 


NEW  YORK. 

NEW  YORK,  September  6L 

ON  the  first  morning  I  got  up  and  went  to  my  eighth- 
storey  window :  New  York  was  spread  out  in  bright 
sunshine  below.  Never  have  I  seen  a  city  more 
hideous  or  more  splendid.  Uncouth,  formless,  pie 
bald,  chaotic,  it  yet  stamps  itself  upon  you  as  the 
most  magnificent  embodiment  of  titanic  energy  and 
force. 

The  foreground  of  my  picture  was  a  lightning- 
conductor,  sweeping  down  from  some  dizzy,  un- 
imagined  height  aslant  to  the  street  below.  Be 
neath  was  a  wing  of  the  Waldorf;  on  the  left  a 
deep,  silent  courtyard,  whence  some  pittance  of  air 
and  light  filtered  into  the  lower  floors ;  on  the  right 
a  huge  skeleton  of  iron  girders  that  is  to  fill  out 
into  yet  another  gigantic  branch  of  this  gigantic 
hoteL  Beyond  lay  the  red,  flat,  sloping  roofs  of  two 
streets  of  houses,  four-  or  five-storeyed,  with  trees 
straggling  up  to  the  light  between  them :  this  might 


A  CITY  OF  CHAOS.  «  11 

have  been  a  bit  of  Bloomsbury.  Beyond  these,  shut 
ting  out  the  direct  front,  rose  to  double  their  height 
the  great,  square,  dirty  white-and-yellow  back  of  a 
huge  Broadway  store ;  the  blind  -  looking  windows 
and  outside  iron  stairs  contradicted  the  comfortable 
Bloomsbury  streets  with  a  suggestion  of  overcrowd 
ing  and  squalor.  To  the  right  of  this,  half-covered 
with  creepers,  a  little  church  cocked  a  squat  Gothic 
spire  at  heaven.  To  the  left  was  a  peep  of  Broad 
way,  with  cable  cars  ceaselessly  gliding  to  and  fro; 
right  on  top  of  them,  as  it  seemed,  the  trains  of 
the  Elevated  Road  puffed  and  rattled  in  endless 
succession.  Just  over  the  iron  fretwork  peeped  a 
little  blue  shop  and  a  little  red  shop  side  by  side; 
elbowing  them,  a  big  greenish  theatre,  and  beyond 
thai  again  a  great  white  block  of  business  houses 
with  a  broad  blue  band  of  advertisements  across  its 
dead  side.  Emerging  above  that,  another  street; 
beyond  that,  another  square  block  of  windows;  a 
clock-tower;  then  in  a  shapeless  brown  jumble  the 
city  stretches  away  out  to  the  steely  band  of  the 
Hudson  and  the  pale  green  hills  of  New  Jersey 
beyond. 

Walk  down  town  towards  the  business  quarter — 
if  one  part  is  the  business  quarter  any  more  than 
another :  the  impression  is  everywhere  the  same. 
The  very  buildings  cry  aloud  of  struggling,  almost 
savage,  unregulated  strength.  No  street  is  laid  out 
as  part  of  a  system,  no  building  as  an  architectural 

*A7*>X 

THF  \ 

"Y     } 

or  / 


I    UNIVERSITY  ) 


12  NEW    YORK. 

unit  in  a  street.  Nothing  is  given  to  beauty  :  every 
thing  centres  in  hard  utility.  It  is  the  outward  ex 
pression  of  the  freest,  fiercest  individualism.  The 
very  houses  are  alive  with  the  instinct  of  competition, 
and  strain  each  one  to  overtop  its  neighbours.  See 
ing  it,  you  can  well  understand  the  admiration  of  an 
American  for  something  ordered  and  proportioned — 
for  the  Eue  de  Eivoli  or  Regent  Street.  Fine  build 
ings,  of  course,  New  York  has  in  every  pure  and 
cross-bred  style  of  architecture  under  the  sun.  Most 
are  suggestions  of  the  Italian  Eenaissance,  as  is  the 
simple  yet  rich  and  stately  Produce  Exchange,  built 
of  terra-cotta  and  red  brick  of  a  warmer,  and  yet  less 
impudent,  red  than  ours.  In  this  lives  the  spirit  of 
the  best  Florentine  models.  Fifth  Avenue  is  lined 
with  such  fine  buildings — here  rococo,  there  a  fine 
Gothic  cathedral,  then,  again,  a  hint  of  Byzantine,  or 
a  dandy  suggestion  of  Mauresque. 

Indeed,  architects  here  appear  far  more  awake  to 
what  is  beautiful  than  ours.  Working  on  the  old 
models,  they  seldom  fail  to  impart  a  suggestion  of 
originality.  You  will  hardly  find  an  eyesore  like 
the  new  Admiralty  in  New  York.  But  too  many 
of  the  best  buildings  are  half  wasted  for  want  of 
space  and  place.  The  Produce  Exchange  has  nearly 
half  its  front  cut  off  by  a  row  of  steamship  offices. 
Many  of  the  most  ambitious  buildings  in  narrow 
Wall  Street  are  so  high  that  it  would  break  any 
man's  neck  to  look  to  the  top  of  them.  Each  for 


FROM   BROOKLYN   BRIDGE.  13 

himself  is  the  motto  of  New  York  building,  and 
confusion  takes  the  hindmost  and  the  foremost,  the 
topmost  and  the  whole  jumble.  No  man  could  do 
its  architecture  justice  unless  he  had  a  pair  of  eyes 
in  the  top  and  the  back  and  both  sides  of  his  head, 
with  a  squint  in  each  of  them. 

The  city  stretches  north  from  Battery  Point,  between 
the  East  Eiver  and  the  Hudson,  so  that  it  is  over  thir 
teen  miles  long  by  about  three  wide.  The  best  way  to 
see  it  as  a  whole,  therefore,  is  from  some  such  point  as 
the  Brooklyn  Bridge,  whence  I  have  seen  it  at  night, 
stretched  out  in  front  of  a  rosy  sunset  that  bathed 
even  New  York  in  softness.  From  that  point  the  low 
red  houses  sloping  up  from  the  waterside  looked  like 
a  carpet  for  the  giants  to  tread  upon.  These  sky- 
scraping  monsters  stretch  in  a  jagged  backbone  along 
the  central  northern  line  of  the  city — mere  white 
frames  for  windows,  most  of  them  appear — square, 
hard  outlines,  four  times  as  high  as  they  are  broad, 
with  regular  rows  on  rows  of  casements  as  close  as 
the  squares  in  a  chess-board. 

And  the  whole  city  plastered  and  painted  and 
papered  with  advertisements.  I  do  not  know  that 
New  York  has  much  to  teach  us  of  the  value  of 
advertising,  but  the  irregular  building  of  the  place, 
with  acres  of  wall  looking  out  everywhere  over  the 
whole  city,  affords  a  fertile  field  which  has  been  sown 
and  cultivated  to  the  last  inch.  At  the  very  entrance 
of  the  harbour  you  are  hit  in  the  face  by  what  it 


14  NEW   YORK. 

would  be  discourtesy  not  to  presume  the  largest 
advertisement  in  the  world.  "  H-0 "  is  its  simple 
legend :  the  symbol  was  a  touch  of  home,  though  I 
have  yet  to  learn  what  "H-0"  is.  There  is  also  a 
product  called  Castoria — children  cry  for  it,  it  ap 
pears;  which  seems  a  poor  enough  recommendation 
to  the  harassed  parent.  But  its  spirited  proprietors 
have  bought  up  every  wall  in  New  York  that  faces 
towards  the  Brooklyn  Bridge.  As  you  stand  there 
the  red  houses  seem  to  be  laced  with  gold  letters ;  the 
whole  city  is  yelling  aloud  concerning  the  virtues  of 
Castoria.  There  are  no  sky-signs,  thank  heaven,  in 
New  York.  But  except  the  sky  every  place  that  will 
hold  an  advertisement  holds  one.  And  these  not  the 
finicking,  bashful  overtures  of  the  effete  East;  no 
chiropodist  worthy  the  name  but  keeps  at  his  door  a 
modelled  human  foot  the  size  of  a  cab- horse ;  and 
other  trades  go  and  do  likewise. 

If  I  get  back  unlynched  to  England,  I  intend  to 
organise  a  movement  for  sending  all  the  members  of 
the  London  County  Council  to  New  York.  If  they 
return  without  learning  a  good  deal  as  to  how  a  city 
should  be  organised  on  the  material  side,  I  should 
then  send  them  somewhere  else.  Take,  for  example, 
the  communications  within  the  city:  they  are  in 
finitely  ahead  of  anything  ever  dreamed  of  in  London. 
The  place,  as  I  have  said,  is  very  long  and  narrow, 
and  it  pivots  on  its  southern  point  at  the  site  of  the 
old  Dutch  Battery.  Here  is  the  business  quarter — 


THE   ELEVATED   RAIL.  15 

Wall  Street,  the  Exchanges,  the  shipping  offices,  and 
the  like.  As  New  York  grows,  the  business  quarter 
naturally  grows  also,  and  pushes  the  residents  either 
to  Brooklyn  or  New  Jersey  over  the  rivers,  or  else 
where  to  the  northward. 

How  are  they  to  be  kept  in  touch  with  their  work  ? 
The  problem  is  fairly  simple,  in  so  far  as  the  suburban 
traffic  all  runs  in  one  or  two  main  directions ;  it  is 
difficult  for  the  corresponding  reason  that  there  is  no 
space  available  for  communications  in  the  scanty 
width  of  New  York  that  is  not  wanted  for  something 
else.  The  problem  is  solved,  not  by  burrowing  under 
the  earth,  as  we  have  done  in  London,  but  by  the 
Elevated  Rail.  Its  iron  pillars  are  planted  along  any 
convenient  street,  the  girders  laid  over  them,  the 
sleepers  and  rails  across  the  girders,  and  there  you 
have  your  railway  complete.  No  doubt  it  spoils  the 
streets  it  runs  along  to  a  certain  extent — though  they 
are  mostly  wider  than  ours — but  I  should  much 
wonder  if  it  depreciated  their  value  as  business  sites. 
And,  beyond  any  doubt,  it  is  infinitely  quicker,  plea- 
santer,  and  simpler  than  our  own  Underground.  I 
could  travel  on  it  hours  every  day  for  the  mere  plea 
sure  of  the  motion  and  of  seeing  New  York. 

The  fare  from  anywhere  to  anywhere  is  5  cents— 
nominally  2Jd.,  but  in  New  York  5  cents  mean  what 
a  penny  is  to  us.  When  you  travel  by  it  you  do  not 
have  to  say  where  you  want  to  go — a  great  conveni 
ence  to  me,  as  I  never  know.  You  pay  your  nickel, 


16  NEW    YORK. 

which  is  2Jd.,  at  the  booking-office  and  get  a  ticket. 
As  the  ticket  is  merely  a  check,  there  is  no  bother 
about  punching  or  collecting  it;  you  drop  it  in  a 
vase  as  you  go  out  on  to  the  platform.  The  train 
comes  up  the  moment  you  have  done  so.  Nomin 
ally  the  trains  run  every  minute  and  a  half;  in 
reality,  I  can  say  quite  honestly  that  I  have  seen 
a  train  dozens  of  times  run  into  a  station  before 
the  train  in  front  of  it  had  got  clear  of  the  plat 
form.  They  glide  on,  chasing  each  other  at  some 
two  hundred  yards'  distance,  till  it  makes  your  head 
ache  to  look  at  them.  Engines  and  cars  alike  are 
very  light,  and  stop  easily,  so  that  there  is  never 
an  accident — perhaps  half-a-dozen  killed  annually 
out  of  two  hundred  million  passengers. 

The  moment  you  have  landed  or  got  aboard,  the 
conductor  pulls  a  string  that  rings  the  bell  on  the 
engine,  and  off  you  go.  As  I  sit  at  my  hotel 
window  I  can  time  a  train  in  the  station :  it  is 
motionless  for  just  five  seconds.  The  conductor 
never  leaves  the  train,  and  to  prevent  anybody  from 
getting  out  while  the  car  is  in  motion,  he  can  shut 
the  iron  doors  with  a  single  motion  of  a  lever.  The 
seats  are  arranged  in  part  like  those  of  our  tram 
cars,  in  part  like  those  of  our  railway  carriages; 
you  can  sit  which  way  you  please.  They  are 
cheaply  and  comfortably  cushioned,  and  the  cushions 
have  rattan  covers — all  you  want  for  a  short  journey. 
So  you  spin  along  above  New  York,  now  swinging 


THE   CABLE  CAR.  17 

round  a  sharp  corner  apparently  into  somebody's 
first-floor  windows,  and  then  rattling  between  serried 
lines  of  tradesmen's  show-rooms.  Who  can  wonder 
that  with  so  cheap  and  quick  and  easy  a  means  of 
travel  the  Manhattan  Company  carries  nearly  two 
hundred  and  fifty  million  people  a-year,  and  makes 
an  annual  profit  of  a  million  dollars  ?  It  deserves  it. 
If  the  Elevated  Railway  is  off  your  route,  you  may 
prefer  the  cable  car.  Here,  again,  you  pay  no  more 
than  5  cents,  whether  you  go  a  hundred  yards  or 
three  miles ;  naturally  this  means  simplification  of 
organisation,  and  therewith  saving  of  expense.  I 
need  not  describe  the  cable  cars,  nor  yet  the  electric 
tramways,  even  if  I  understood  them.  We  have 
them  in  England,  though,  of  course,  not  in  London. 
And  then  there  is  our  old  friend  the  horse.  I  dare 
not  say  how  many  tramway  lines  run  North  and 
South  in  New  York,  or  how  many  subsidiary  lines 
meet  them  East  and  West.  On  to  many  of  the 
last  you  can  be  transferred  from  the  trunk  lines,  and 
thus  travel  in  two  or  even  three  trams,  all  for  your 
original  5  cents.  Then,  still  for  the  same  benef 
icent  nickel,  and  sometimes  for  even  three  or  two 
cents,  or  even  only  one,  you  have  the  choice  of 
about  thirty  ferries  to  take  you  to  Brooklyn  or 
Jersey  City  or  Staten  Island,  or  anywhere.  The 
giant  Suspension  Bridge  you  can  cross  free,  if  you 
like,  by  a  promenade  in  the  middle  of  it;  if  you 
don't,  you  can  take  the  cable  railway  on  each  side 

B 


18  NEW    YORK. 

of  the  footway  for  three  cents,  or  drive  over  in  a 
hansom  by  the  waggon-track  on  each  side  of  that. 
It  is  worth  all  the  money,  not  only  for  the  gro 
tesquely  magnificent  view,  but  for  the  pleasure  of 
seeing  so  well -arranged  and  practical  a  means  of 
popular  transport. 

The  streets  of  New  York,  as  most  people  know, 
are  named  only  in  the  older  Southern  quarter.  In 
the  newer  parts  they  go  by  numbers.  The  Avenues 
— First,  Second,  and  the  like — run  North  and  South, 
beginning  on  the  East  side.  The  streets  run  East 
and  West,  beginning  from  the  South.  To  the  Euro 
pean  mind  this  device  is  at  first  hateful.  What 
possible  individuality  can  you  associate  with  Sixty- 
ninth  Street?  But  after  two  days  you  begin  to 
appreciate  it.  For  you  have  only  to  know  the  ad 
dress  of  any  place  and  you  know  not  only  exactly 
the  direction,  but  also  exactly  how  far  you  have 
to  go.  Of  numberless  other  material  and  mechani 
cal  conveniences,  which  we  might  have  and  ought 
to  have  and  do  not  have  in  London,  I  must  speak 
some  other  time  when  I  have  more  paper  to  speak 
on.  And  yet  high  authorities  say  that  New  York 
is  the  worst  governed  city  in  the  Union.  True, 
the  pavements  are  atrocious,  and  when  it  has  been 
raining,  even  the  Sardanapalus  luxury  of  the  Wal 
dorf  is  besmirched  with  a  deposit  of  mud  in  your 
bath.  Also  the  place  is  almost  worse  lighted  than 
London.  For  the  explanation  of  all  this  I  hear 


PRACTICAL   GENIUS.  19 

already  dark  tales  of  municipal  corruption  almost 
incredible  to  the  simple  Briton.  It  is  true,  again, 
that  the  magnificent  system  of  communications  owes 
little  enough  to  municipal  support.  It  is  the  true- 
born  creation  of  American  enterprise  and  of  the 
only  truly  practical  genius  that  just  adapts  means 
to  ends  and  no  more.  Yet,  take  it  all  together, 
the  County  Councillor  has  still  something  to  learn 
from  New  York.  And,  if  it  is  the  worst  governed 
city,  I,  for  one,  could  make  myself  very  fairly  com 
fortable  in  the  best 


III. 


WHERE   NEW   YORK   LIVES. 

NEW  YORE,  September  & 

WHERE  do  the  people  of  New  York  live  ?  Where,  you 
will  ask,  but  in  New  York  ?  Quite  wrong.  New  York, 
squeezed  in  between  the  Hudson  and  the  East  Kiver, 
is  far  too  narrow  for  a  tithe  of  those  who  do  business 
there  to  find  habitations  in  the  city.  Moreover,  at 
the  point  where  land  might  begin  to  be  far  enough 
removed  from  the  heart  of  the  city  for  people  of  not 
quite  unlimited  means  to  live,  there  comes  Central 
Park,  taking  up  about  a  quarter  of  the  available  space, 
and  leaving  only  a  little  strip  on  either  side.  So  the 
man  who  works  in  New  York  must  either  retreat 
even  further  North,  and  descend  each  day  down  the 
tongue  of  Manhattan  Island  to  his  work,  or  else  he 
must  get  over  one  of  the  rivers  into  Long  Island  or 
New  Jersey. 

If  he  chooses  the  first  evil,  he  can  either  go  North 
of  the  Harlem  Eiver  and  live  in  a  house,  or  remain 
below  it  and  live  in  a  flat.  The  Kiver  is  reached  at 


THE   SUBURBS.  21 

Hundred  and  Fifty-Fifth  Street :  all  New  York  South 
of  this  is  on  Manhattan  Island.  Though  this  is  called 
an  island  it  is  really  a  peninsula ;  that  is  to  say,  the 
Harlem  Eiver  is  a  comparatively  practicable  stream. 
It  is  possible  to  run  bridges  over  it,  whereas  the  con 
nection  across  the  Hudson  with  New  Jersey  must  at 
present  be  made  entirely  by  ferries,  and  that  with  Long 
Island  very  largely  so.  North  of  Manhattan  Island 
the  suburbs  stretch  away  almost  endlessly.  The 
eastern  part  of  them  is  called  the  Annexed  District. 
This  is  served  by  an  extension  of  the  Elevated  Eailroad 
and  by  the  New  York  Central.  The  West  side  con 
nects  with  the  Elevated  Eailroad,  which  ends  at 
Hundred  and  Fifty-Fifth  Street,  by  the  New  York 
and  Northern  Eailroad.  And  beyond  the  continuous 
line  of  houses  from  Battery  Point,  the  southernmost 
limit  of  the  city,  to  the  northern  suburbs  stretches 
town  on  town,  village  on  village,  almost  endlessly, 
each  sending  in  its  daily  contingent  to  the  huge  dollar- 
hunt  of  New  York. 

Suppose  you  want  to  live  nearer  your  work — say 
within  half  an  hour  or  so — then  you  must  live  in  a 
flat.  Land  is  too  scarce  to  allow  a  whole  house  South 
of  the  Harlem  to  any  man  far  short  of  his  million. 
Flats  are  of  every  kind  and  of  every  price.  There 
are  flats  to  which  the  working  man  and  junior  clerk 
can  aspire  without  presumption,  and  flats  which  the 
millionaire  need  not  despise.  The  cheapest  run  to 
about  nineteen  or  twenty  dollars  a -month.  This 


22  WHERE   NEW   YORK    LIVES. 

means  nearly  £50  a-year,  which  seems  a  back-breaking 
rent  for  the  most  prosperous  mechanic  to  pay.  For 
this  he  will  get  four  rooms,  a  kitchen  with  gas-range 
and  hot  water  laid  on  from  the  basement,  a  bedroom, 
a  dining-room,  and  a  parlour.  The  rooms  are  very 
small,  they  generally  look  out  at  a  dark  courtyard,  and 
often  there  is  only  one  front  door  and  a  common  hall 
—say,  rather,  a  narrow  passage — between  two  of  them. 
Your  neighbour  may  be  an  Italian  costermonger  or  a 
Polish-Jewish  vendor  of  old  clothes.  In  any  case  he 
is  almost  sure  to  be  noisy,  while  the  court  will  be 
filled  with  clothes  drying  and  the  smell  of  every  un 
savoury  kind  of  cooking  in  the  world.  In  summer  court 
and  staircase,  front  steps  and  streets,  will  swarm  with 
squalling  children.  Yet,  take  it  all  round,  there  are 
advantages  which  no  mechanic  in  England  is  likely  to 
find.  The  sanitary,  heating,  and  lighting  arrangements 
are  better,  the  stairs  and  halls  are  carpeted,  the  whole 
place  is  decorated,  not  magnificently,  but  at  least  with 
an  attempt  at  grace  and  comfort.  The  Englishman 
will  often  be  more  comfortable,  but  he  will  hardly  find 
a  dwelling  with  such  an  air  of  social  self-respect — 
at  any  rate,  while  it  is  new  and  unoccupied.  You  will 
answer  that  the  English  mechanic  would  never  dream 
of  paying  £50  a-year  in  rent.  Probably  not.  But 
then  the  New  York  mechanic  can  afford  it  out  of  his 
wages,  and  the  Englishman  cannot.  To  the  under- 
cierk  such  flats  as  these  offer  themselves  as  a  cheap 
and  handy  abode,  Jn  New  York  there  is  none  of  the 


RENT.  23 

foolish  convention  that  compels  the  clerk  with  a  pound 
a-week  to  live  in  a  more  expensive  house  than  the 
working  man  with  two.  This  is  no  doubt  a  blessing, 
but  it  has  its  reverse  side.  If  the  carpet  and  the  gilt 
decorations  stimulate  social  self-respect  in  the  working 
man,  the  cabbage-water  and  the  brats  on  the  doorstep 
tend  to  destroy  it  in  the  clerk. 

Moving  upwards,  you  can  get  for  eighty  dollars 
a-month,  or  nearly  £200  a-year,  very  much  the  same 
sort  of  flat  in  the  same  sort  of  quarter  as  you  would 
get  for  half  the  money  in  London.  By  a  curious  ex 
ception  to  the  usual  excellence  of  American  house- 
fittings,  some  of  these  are  being  built  without  either 
lift  or  electric  light,  though  all  have  hot  water  laid  on 
from  below.  From  the  eighty-dollar  flat  you  can 
advance  with  your  income — or  without  it  if  you  like 
—to  almost  any  price.  I  have  seen  an  apartment  at 
£480  a-year,  and  one  at  £520.  In  London  you  would 
expect  a  palace  for  the  money ;  in  New  York  you  get 
certainly  a  most  commodious  and  charming  flat,  but 
still  an  unmistakable  flat.  The  480-pounder  was  as 
conveniently  arranged  and  fitted  and  as  elegantly 
decorated  as  any  flat  could  well  be.  Yet,  all  said  and 
done,  it  contained  only  eight  rooms,  and  those  neither 
very  large  nor  very  lofty. 

And  who  lives  in  a  flat  that  costs  £500  a-year  ?  A 
Londoner  who  should  admit  that  he  had  taken  such 
might  almost  as  well  join  a  supper  club  at  once ;  his 
respectability  would  be  mortally  wounded  in  any  case. 


24  WHERE  NEW   YORK   LIVES. 

But  in  New  York,  the  stranger  learns  with  amazement, 
a  man  will  often  take  such  an  abode  whose  income  is 
but  double  his  rent  all  told.  It  sounds  incredible ; 
but  in  New  York  almost  everybody  lives  above  his 
income,  and  especially  lays  out  his  money,  or  his 
credit,  in  directions  where  there  is  most  swagger  to  be 
got  for  it.  Women,  many  people  will  tell  you,  are 
especial  offenders.  While  the  husband  works  and 
worries  himself  into  his  grave  at  forty,  many  women, 
out  of  sheer  ostentation,  will  hire  a  resplendent  flat  to 
live  in,  even  though  there  be  next  to  nothing  left  to 
live  on  after  the  rent  is  paid.  But  then  there  is  always 
an  alternative  policy — not  to  pay.  There  is  a  class  of 
people  in  New  York  who  appear  to  eke  out  a  pre 
carious  subsistence  by  living  rent-free  in  flats.  When 
the  first  month  is  out  and  the  first  rent  is  due,  they 
explain  to  the  landlord  that  they  cannot  pay  because 
they  have  no  money.  They  then  depart  and  put  in  a 
month  in  a  new  flat,  and  so  on,  at  the  rate  of  twelve 
annually  for  ever. 

In  one  way  this  existence  hits  the  very  ideal  of  the 
New  Yorker.  About  a  month  in  one  habitation  is 
just  about  as  much  as  suits  him.  Compare  the  lim 
pet  Englishman  and  the  gad-about  American  in  this 
respect.  Their  respective  stability  is  very  significant. 
In  London  you  cannot  easily  get  a  shorter  lease  of  a 
flat  than  seven  years ;  in  New  York  it  is  a  bitter  hard 
ship  to  be  tied  down  to  as  much  as  one.  Other  griev 
ances  of  the  flat-dweller  are  the  tyranny  of  the  janitor, 


THE   COMMUTER.  25 

who  is  allowed  to  make  rules  for  the  house  at  his  own 
pleasure — another  fact  very  illustrative  of  democratic, 
happy-go-lucky  America — and  the  fact  that  they  are 
not  allowed  to  have  any  children.  Anybody  who  has 
lived  in  a  flat  can  fully  understand  the  objection  to 
this  latter  vice.  But  the  Americans  are  too  prone  to 
be  childless  as  it  is,  and  anything  which  discourages 
increase  and  multiplication  is  almost  a  danger  to 
society. 

The  alternative  to  life  in  a  flat  is  to  become  a  com 
muter  and  live  across  one  of  the  rivers.  A  commuter 
is  the  American  for  season-ticket  holder;  he  gets  a 
combination  ticket  carrying  him  across  the  ferry  and 
then  by  railway  to  his  house.  He  is  despised  by  the 
New  Yorker;  the  comic  papers  are  never  tired  of 
representing  him  starting  out  for  Lonelyville  with  a 
huge  bundle  of  town-bought  provisions  in  his  hand. 
The  reason  for  this  contempt  is  not  uninstructive.  In 
London  the  word  suburban  is  sometimes  used  in 
derision ;  it  is  then  meant  to  imply  narrow-mindedness, 
dulness,  smug  respectability.  But  the  basis  of  scorn 
for  the  commuter  is  no  supposed  defect  of  intellectual 
elevation ;  it  rests — need  the  fundamental  factor  be 
invoked  ? — on  the  dollar.  The  commuter  earns  his 
money  in  New  York,  and  he  spends  it  in  New  Jersey ; 
that  is  his  crime.  True,  the  commuter  might  answer 
that  it  is  hardly  logical  to  reprobate  him  for  buying 
his  dinner  in  New  Jersey,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
laugh  at  him  for  carrying  it  home  from  New  York. 


26  WHERE   NEW   YORK   LIVES. 

But  in  the  contest  of  wits  the  commuter  has  little 
spirit  left  to  answer  anything. 

The  nearer  suburbs  are  Brooklyn,  Jersey  City,  and 
Hoboken,  which  are  mainly  occupied  by  working 
men.  They  stand  for  Suuthwark  and  Battersea, 
except  that  to  Jersey  City  and  Hoboken  you  have  to 
cross  the  river  in  heavy  ferry-boats,  built  to  carry 
vehicles  as  well  as  people,  which  take  about  a  quarter 
of  an  hour  in  the  journey.  In  winter,  when  fog  is 
thick  and  rivers  are  choked  with  ice,  this  sometimes 
lengthens  to  an  hour.  If  you  live  further  out,  you 
have  to  add  this  hour  to  your  railway  journey.  In 
the  suburban  districts  houses  are  cheaper  than  in 
New  York ;  you  can  actually  get  a  small  one  for  £75 
a-year,  and  a  very  good  one  for  £200.  Most  people 
living  in  New  Jersey  borrow  money  on  mortgage  from 
the  loan  associations  and  build  their  own  houses. 

In  this  way  there  has  been  formed  at  Orange,  about 
a  dozen  miles  out,  a  park  of  idyllic  suburban  villas. 
You  buy  your  land  and  put  up  your  house,  the  Com 
pany  that  owns  the  park  taking  care  that  it  is  up  to 
the  general  standard  of  elegance.  You  have  your  own 
lawn,  and  the  use  of  miles  of  most  delightful  wooded 
hill  and  dale.  Its  impression  of  rusticity  without 
boorishness  is  altogether  adorable.  But  Orange  is 
not  for  everybody.  And  even  Orange  you  approach 
through  miles  of  unreclaimed  grey  swamp — a  soulless 
desert  but  for  certain  manure-works,  which  drench 
the  whole  State  with  murky,  stinking  fumes.  To  get 


THE   CAUSE  OF  CORRUPTION.  27 

to  your  work  you  may,  like  enough,  have  to  change 
from  train  to  ferry,  ferry  to  elevated  rail,  elevated  to 
tram  car,  and  then  have  a  bit  of  a  walk  at  the  end. 
It  is  a  toss  up  whether  this  will  take  you  one  hour 
or  three.  All  is  done  that  man  can  do  to  perfect  the 
communications.  But  the  geographical  situation  of 
Manhattan  Island  remains. 

The  obvious  deduction  from  all  this  is,  that  if  you 
are  going  to  live  in  New  York  it  is  well  first  to  take 
the  precaution  of  being  a  millionaire.  But  there  is 
also  another  more  general  result  of  the  geographical 
position.  New  York,  as  I  said,  is  held  by  Americans 
to  be  the  worst  governed  city  in  the  Union,  and  it  is 
all  the  fault  of  Manhattan  Island.  With  a  popula 
tion  either  passing  nomadically  from  flat  to  flat  or 
else  settling  many  miles  outside  the  city  limits,  it  is 
very  difficult  to  get  together  any  steady  body  of  civic 
opinion.  The  result  is  that  municipal  government 
has  been  left  to  ward  politicians  of  the  Tammany 
class,  to  their  own  comfort  and  that  of  their  friends. 
The  amount  squandered  on  public  works  of  no  public 
utility  is  said  to  be  enormous.  Tammany  made  it  a 
practice  to  buy  in  the  dearest  market  with  the  rate 
payers'  money  and  take  a  commission. 

Until  this  year  the  state  of  education  in  New  York 
was  similarly  deplorable.  I  am  told  that  popular 
education  is  not  very  much  to  boast  of  anywhere  in 
the  States,  except  perhaps  in  Boston.  The  curriculum, 
it  appears,  is  too  wide,  filling  children's  heads  with  all 


28  WHERE   NEW   YORK   LIVES. 

sorts  of  undigested  knowledge,  but  failing  of  the 
mental  discipline  which  comes  of  grinding  away  at 
any  subject — no  matter  how  useless  on  paper — until 
it  is  mastered.  In  New  York,  besides,  the  old  system 
put  a  premium  on  corruption  and  resultant  incapacity. 
The  schools  were  organised  in  districts,  with  a  local 
body  in  command  of  the  schools  of  each.  Now  local 
self-government  is  the  salvation  of  the  world,  so  long 
as  the  local  unit  of  self-government  is  not  too  small. 
When  it  becomes  small  enough  to  be  a  family  party, 
then  corruption  comes  and  inefficiency.  In  New  York 
the  smallness  of  the  district  turned  the  schools  into 
the  hands  of  the  local  bosses.  The  school-teachers 
were  drawn  mainly  from  the  daughters  and  the 
maiden  aunts  of  the  leaders  of  Tammany  Hall,  and 
they  were  not  in  all  cases  the  best  that  could  be 
found.  But  in  July  of  this  year  New  York  changed 
all  that.  There  is  now  an  efficient  and  zealous  cen 
tral  authority,  with  wide  powers  over  all  the  schools. 
And  this  example  of  purification  is  being  plenteously 
followed  in  other  departments.  From  all  I  hear  the 
worst  days  of  political  corruption  in  the  States  are 
over.  But  for  all  that,  the  problem  of  local  govern 
ment  must  always  be  difficult  in  New  York,  because 
it  will  always  be  difficult  to  put  your  finger  at  any 
moment  on  the  New  Yorker. 


29 


IV. 


THE  DOLLAR. 

NEW  YORK,  September  9. 

THE  dollar,  like  so  many  of  the  world's  greatest,  inspires 
at  first  sight  interest,  but  hardly  affection.  From  a 
casual  study  of  the  monetary  controversy  now  raging 
in  this  country,  I  had  been  led  to  expect  that  the 
dollar  was  a  gold  dollar,  and  that  Mr  Bryan  wanted 
to  turn  it  into  silver.  It  cannot  be  too  widely  known 
that  the  dollar  as  he  is  spent  is  neither  gold  nor 
silver ;  he  is  a  piece  of  paper.  Not  only  so,  but  often 
a  very  worn  and  dirty  piece  of  paper  at  that.  It  is 
astonishing  how  a  dollar  will  age  in  three  or  four 
years.  True,  the  paper  reflects  the  greatest  credit  on 
its  inventor;  it  never  tears — though  perhaps  this  is 
because  no  strong  man  ever  really  tries  to  tear  it — 
still,  it  is  but  a  piece  of  paper  after  all.  It  bears  on 
its  weather-beaten  face  an  inscription  to  the  effect 
that  there  has  been  deposited  in  the  Treasury  of  the 
United  States  one  silver  dollar,  which  will  be  paid  to 
the  bearer  on  demand.  Others  of  the  breed  merely 


30  THE   DOLLAR. 

assert  that  the  United  States  of  America  will  pay 
one  dollar,  without  specifying  its  material.  The 
mysterious  philanthropist  who  deposited  the  silver 
dollar  apparently  prefers  to  remain  anonymous ;  while 
where  or  how  you  cash  it  is  left  equally  dark.  It 
must  certainly  be  somewhere  in  Washington,  whence 
the  United  States  of  America  date  their  promise,  but 
the  American  Eagle  is  too  old  a  bird  to  give  any 
more  precise  address.  The  dollar,  so  far  as  my 
experience  goes,  is  always  illustrated,  usually  with 
a  vignette  photograph  of  some  eminent  citizen  or 
other,  occasionally  also  with  scenes  from  the  life  of 
Columbus  or  some  other  appropriate  subject.  This 
gives  an  aesthetic  as  well  as  a  commercial  interest  to 
the  dollar,  which  cannot  be  too  highly  prized.  Its 
nominal  value  is  4s.  2d. 

I  say  nominal  value,  partly  because  nobody  in  this 
country  seems  to  be  quite  sure  just  now  what  the 
value  of  a  dollar  is,  still  less  what  it  ought  to  be, 
and  partly  for  more  personal  reasons.  It  is  a  fact 
well  known  to  the  practical  traveller,  though  curiously 
overlooked  by  political  economists,  that  the  expense 
of  living  in  a  country  is  regulated  by  its  unit  of 
currency.  Thus  if  you  take  the  Orient  Express  from 
Paris  to  Vienna,  your  rate  of  living  doubles  itself  on 
the  way.  In  Paris  the  franc  is  the  unit.  When  you 
get  into  Germany  it  is  the  mark ;  you  therefore  spend 
twelve  pence  where  before  you  only  spent  ten.  In 
Austria  you  enter  the  dominion  of  the  florin,  and 


PRACTICAL   HINTS   FOR   SPENDING   MONEY.  31 

gaily  spend  Is.  8d.  under  the  impression  that  it  is  a 
mark,  and  therefore  a  franc.  Now,  as  the  dollar,  like 
the  franc,  mark,  and  florin,  is  divided  into  one  hundred 
integral  parts — to  wit,  cents — the  first  impulse  of  the 
untutored  English  mind  is  to  regard  a  dollar  as  a 
shilling  and  spend  it  accordingly.  Happily,  however, 
the  dollar,  being  made  of  paper,  also  offers  some  points 
of  analogy  to  the  £5  note.  To  break  it  up  and  to 
receive  only  mere  coin  as  change  is  something  of  the 
same  solemn  and  irredeemable  sacrifice.  By  force  of 
this  analogy  I  have  now  brought  myself  to  regard  all 
dollars,  or  notes  equivalent  to  multiples  of  a  dollar,  as 
indifferently  worth  £5.  But  when  once  the  dollar  is 
broken,  this  saving  influence  abandons  me  ;  half- 
dollars  and  quarters — in  the  eyes  of  heaven  florins 
and  shillings — can  only  be  regarded  as  sixpences,  or 
half-francs,  and  as  threepenny-bits.  So  the  dime — 
ten  cents  —  becomes  a  sort  of  penny,  and  the  five- 
cent  nickel  a  halfpenny.  As  for  the  cent,  it  is 
a  mere  irresponsible  piece  of  childishness  like  the 
farthing.  The  fact  that  the  Americans  will  produce 
indispensable  newspapers  for  only  one  cent,  which  in 
some  respects  I  feel  strongly  worthy  of  admiration, 
yet  adds  a  complication  to  life  which  it  might  well 
spare. 

All  this  may  be  called  the  profane  or  non-political 
view  of  the  dollar.  But  just  now  the  fortunes  of  that 
always  necessary  and  sometimes  harmless  piece  of 
paper  constitute  the  one  subject  of  interest  for  what 


32  THE   DOLLAR 

— on  brief  acquaintance,  and  with  the  greatest  respect 
for  Lombard  Street  and  adjacent  parts — I  should  be 
inclined  to  call  the  keenest  business  people  of  the 
world.  Is  the  dollar  to  be  silver  as  well  as  gold  ? 
Is  the  silver  dollar  to  be  monetised,  or  re-monetised, 
or  constituted  as  primary  or  redemption  money,  or 
whatever  else  you  like  to  call  it  ?  That,  as  everybody 
now  knows,  is  the  Chicago  platform,  and,  on  this 
issue,  Mr  Bryan  and  his  Democratic-Populist  party 
— Popocrats  they  are  pleasantly  called  here — stand 
or  fall.  It  is  the  one  and  only  issue  of  the  forth 
coming  election,  just  as  Home  Eule  was  our  one  and 
only  issue  in  1886.  Protection  is  not  in  it,  and  that 
though  Mr  M'Kinley  is  a  candidate.  His  party  had, 
indeed,  got  up  a  little  pamphlet  entitled  'How 
M'Kinley  is  Hated  in  England/  on  which  it  was 
hoped  he  would  ride  triumphant  into  the  Presidential 
chair.  But,  in  the  dollar's  hour  of  danger,  even  to  be 
hated  in  England  has  sunk  to  be  a  secondary  recom 
mendation.  Out  of  twenty-four  pamphlets  actually 
issued  by  the  Eepublican  party  up  to  now,  nineteen 
deal  with  the  currency  question,  arid  only  a  beggarly 
three  with  Protection.  In  any  case,  even  supposing 
Mr  M'Kinley  wins  hands  down,  any  new  M'Kinley 
Bill  is  like  to  be  made  impossible  by  the  opposition 
of  the  Democratic  Senate,  until  the  chances  of  human 
life  and  the  corruption  of  the  human  pocket — this  is 
the  way  an  American  himself  put  it  to  me — leaven 
that  body  into  Republicanism  again.  Hence  you  will 


THE   CASE   FOR   SILVER.  33 

find  strong  Democrats,  sworn  foes  of  Protection,  as 
hot  for  M'Kinley — or,  more  truly,  as  hot  against 
Bryan — as  the  keenest  Eepublican.  Night  and  day 
in  every  newspaper,  in  every  cafe*,  in  every  street 
car,  it  is  the  dollar,  and  the  dollar  alone,  whose  fate 
is  discussed  and  determined. 

It  is  difficult  for  me  to  do  justice  to  the  Silver 
party,  for  the  simple  reason  that,  being  just  landed 
in  the  heart  of  the  Gold  country,  I  can  hardly  find 
a  man  who  will  go  further  than  such  pointed  but  un- 
enlightening  expressions  of  opinion  as  "  repudiators," 
"thieves,"  "liars,"  and  the  like.  It  is  almost  an 
insult  to  ask  a  New  Yorker  even  to  state  the  case 
for  Silver.  I  was  able,  however,  to  get  a  summary  of 
the  party's  argument  from  Mr  William  P.  St  John, 
treasurer  of  the  National  Democratic  organisation — 
a  gentleman,  moreover,  who  has  proved  his  financial 
capabilities  in  an  important  business  position  here, 
and  his  disinterestedness  in  resigning  this  rather 
than  his  convictions  as  to  the  currency.  The  measure 
advocated  by  Mr  Bryan  and  his  friends  is  that  any 
man  owning  silver  bullion  may  have  it  coined  into 
dollars  at  the  ratio  of  16  parts  by  weight  of  silver 
to  one  of  gold  —  371/25  grains  in  the  silver  dollar 
to  be  equal  to  23'22  grains  in  the  gold.  The  present 
market  ratio  is  approximately  32  to  1,  so  that  this 
means  that  the  State  is  to  double  the  value  of  the 
silver  dollar  as  against  that  of  silver  bullion.  The 
effect  of  this,  it  is  plain,  will  be  to  depreciate  the 


34  THE   DOLLAR. 

value  of  money  as  against  commodities.  When  the 
number  of  dollars  in  circulation  is  small,  their  value 
in  goods  is  high.  When  it  is  large,  their  value  in 
goods  is  low :  conversely,  the  value  of  goods  in  dollars 
is  high.  A  contracted  currency  involves  low  prices ; 
an  expanded  one,  high  prices.  The  enormous  increase 
in  the  number  of  dollars  in  circulation  resultant  upon 
the  free  coinage  of  silver  would  therefore  bring  high 
prices  for  agricultural  products,  a  greater  demand  in 
agricultural  districts  for  manufactured  goods,  freer 
employment  of  labour,  higher  wages,  and  finally,  gain 
to  the  very  banker  in  an  increased  demand  for  money 
for  investment  both  in  agriculture  and  manufacture. 
In  two  words — universal  prosperity. 

It  is  not  apprehended  by  my  authority  that  this 
doubling  of  the  legal  value  of  silver  will  lead  either 
to  an  inrush  of  silver  from  abroad  or  to  an  outrush 
of  gold  from  the  United  States.  European  silver 
money,  he  points  out,  is  overvalued  in  gold,  as  com 
pared  with  the  silver  of  the  United  States,  from  3 
to  7  per  cent,  while  silverware  carries  the  additional 
value  of  the  labour  expended  upon  it.  As  to  the 
East,  the  course  of  silver  is  ever  eastward,  not  west 
ward;  and  especially  eastward  to  British  India.  As 
to  the  value  of  gold,  Mr  St  John  contends  that  only 
from  one-fortieth  to  one-sixtieth  part  of  the  gold  in 
the  United  States  is  in  actual  circulation.  The  rest 
is  in  the  Treasury  —  where  it  will  stay,  since  the 


•*»•«• 

> 


or  THE 
UNIVERSITY    1 


ff ''AND   IMPORT.  35 


Treasury  has  the  option  of  redeeming  notes  in 
silver — and  in  the  banks,  as  the  undisturbed  portion 
of  their  reserves  against  their  liabilities  —  where  it 
also  will  stay. 

Any  momentary  tendency  to  cause  a  premium  on 
gold  dollars  will  tend  to  increase  exports  and  diminish 
imports  by  increasing  the  net  return  to  the  exporter 
from  the  sale  of  his  gold  bill  of  exchange,  and  by 
adding  to  the  cost  of  the  bill  of  exchange  with  which 
the  importer  pays  for  his  foreign  goods.  Export  will 
thus  increase  and  import  diminish,  until  the  former 
overtop  the  latter.  Hence,  more  manufacturing  in 
America,  more  wages,  more  market  for  home  products. 
Secondly,  the  balance  of  export  over  import  means 
that  Europe  must  settle  with  the  States  in  money. 
Europe  will  settle  in  gold  rather  than  lose  3  to  7  per 
cent  on  her  overvalued  silver  coin.  With  foreign 
gold  coming  in,  the  silver  dollar  and  gold  dollar  be 
come  exactly  of  equal  worth  in  the  States  as  bullion. 
The  ratio  of  16  to  1  by  weight  is  permanently  estab 
lished  as  the  relative  value  of  the  two  metals,  coined 
or  uncoined. 

Plainly  there  is  no  repudiation  in  this — no  paying 
of  a  two-dollar  debt  with  a  single  dollar.  It  means 
simply  raising  the  value  of  the  silver  dollar  and  lower 
ing  that  of  the  gold  dollar  by  one  operation.  Such 
a  project  is  honest  enough,  if  only  it  is  possible.  That 
it  is  possible  no  man  else  that  I  have  spoken  with  will 


36  THE    DOLLAR. 

agree.  My  personal  opinion  is  worth  nothing;  but 
seeing  that,  large  as  are  the  United  States,  the  world 
is  larger,  I  do  not  understand  how  the  States  can 
set  up  an  arbitrary  ratio  between  the  precious  metals 
all  for  themselves.  However,  there  is  the  silver 
theory  officially  stated  as  the  best  financial  authority 
states  it.  That  the  supporters  of  Mr  Bryan  hold 
these  views  as  a  body,  or  even  understand  them,  I 
ain  far  from  asserting.  The  Western  miner  and  mine- 
owner  anticipate  coining  their  silver  into  dollars  at 
double  its  present  value.  The  Western  farmer  ex 
pects  to  halve  his  debts  by  paying  them,  or  continu 
ing  to  owe  them,  on  the  silver  basis,  though  this  will 
be  no  halving  if  the  bullion  value  of  the  silver  dollar 
is  to  equal  that  of  the  gold.  As  for  the  most  of  Mr 
Bryan's  supporters,  they  are  probably  veteran  Demo 
crats,  who  find  it  impossible  to  declare  themselves 
against  the  nominations  made  regularly  and  formally 
by  a  convention  of  their  whole  party.  "  If  a  plaster 
Indian  from  outside  a  cigar  -  store  were  regularly 
nominated,"  said  a  cynic,  "these  chaps  would  vote 
for  him." 

For  the  rest,  the  position  was  summed  up  to  me 
by  a  very  young  man  I  met  the  other  night  at  dinner. 
"They're  hungry,"  he  said.  "What's  the  good  of 
talking  sound  finance  to  a  man  when  he's  hungry  ? 
Feed  him  first,  and  then  he'll  listen.  They  haven't 
forgotten  Homestead,  and  they're  sore.  They  know 


A   STATESMAN.  37 

that  they  can't  be  worse  off  than  they  are,  and  so  they 
go  in  for  any  change.  If  it's  not  free  silver,  it'll  be 
something  else.  If  it's  not  this  time,  it'll  be  next. 
And  they're  quite  right."  If  this  is  true,  the  question 
of  this  election  is  of  a  sort  that  goes  deeper  than 
argumentations  of  political  economy.  I  almost  think 
that  very  young  man  is  the  first  American  statesman 
I  have  met 


V. 


THE  U.S.H. 

NBW  YORK,  September  10. 

BROADWAY  cabk-  car,  5  cents ;  Brooklyn  Bridge  cable 
railroad,  3  cents ;  Brooklyn  electric  tramway,  5  cents 
— five  miles,  I  should  say,  of  quick  and  easy  travel 
ling  for  the  American  equivalent  of  about  3d.  brought 
me  to  where  the  Brooklyn  Navy  Yard  sweltered 
under  at  least  a  subtropical  sun.  Presently  I  was 
inside  a  long  two-storeyed  wooden  building,  all  cool 
boarding  and  ventilation,  and  was  shaking  hands  with 
a  spare,,  working-like  figure  in  a  black-braided  blue 
undress  uniform.  It  needed  no  words  to  say  that 
here  was  a  man  who  understood  his  duty,  and  did  it. 
"I  know  you  won't  tell  me  all  you  can;  please 
tell  me  all  you  may,"  and  I  plunged  into  questions 
about  the  three  new  first-class  battleships  which  the 
United  States  are  just  giving  out  to  contract.  It 
appears  that  the  United  States,  like  all  other  Powers 
in  the  world,  are  building  their  newest  battleships 
after  our  own  models.  The  three  vessels  are  armed, 


NEW   BATTLESHIPS.  39 

in  sharp  departure  from  earlier  types,  very  similarly 
to  our  own  Majestic — four  big  13-inch  guns,  in  pairs 
forward  and  aft,  and  a  dozen  6-inch  quick-firers  be 
tween.  "Our  officers  must  have  powerful  batteries," 
said  my  informant ;  "  it's  the  tradition  of  our  service." 
"Yes,"  I  said,  reflecting  on  some  occasions  when  our 
own  ships  have  had  cause  to  note  the  fact.  "And 
so  they  will  have  the  guns,"  he  went  on,  "whether 
they've  the  men  to  work  them  or  the  ammunition  to 
serve  them."  The  displacement  of  the  new  ships  is 
to  be  about  12,000  tons;  the  armour  much  heavier 
than  the  Majesties ;  the  speed  less — not  over  sixteen 
knots  an  hour  apparently ;  and  the  draught  of  water 
also  much  less.  "  We  have  made  great  efforts,"  said 
my  host,  "to  keep  down  the  draught  of  our  ships, 
though  up  to  now  we  haven't  always  succeeded  as 
well  as  we  wanted  to.  Your  Majestic  and  Eoyal 
Sovereign  would  be  almost  useless  on  our  coasts. 
They  could  get  into  New  York  and  the  Chesapeake  and 
into  Boston  at  high  water,  but  hardly  anywhere  else." 
Of  the  three  battleships — which  will  make  nine 
most  powerful  vessels  of  this  type  in  the  United 
States  Navy  —  my  informant  predicted,  doubtless 
knew,  that  one  would  be  built  at  San  Francisco. 
"I  suppose  that  when  she's  finished  she  will  be 
brought  round  to  the  Atlantic?"  I  hazarded.  "No," 
he  said ;  "  it  is  our  policy  to  gather  ships  on  the 
Pacific  coast.  The  Oregon" — a  very  fine  first-class 
ship  completed  last  year — "was  kept  in  the  Pacific." 


40  THE   U.S.N. 

"But  that  splits  up  your  force  very  much."  "Yes," 
he  replied,  "but  it  is  our  policy.  You  see  we  have 
wanted  a  strong  fleet  there  once  or  twice  lately,  and 
we  haven't  had  it." 

"As  in  Chili,  for  instance,"  said  I,  diplomatically 
ignoring  our  occupation  of  Corinto  in  Nicaragua. 
"That  would  be  serious  for  us  in  the  Pacific  if  we 
came  to  war."  "Well,  I  suppose  you  would  have  a 
great  many  ships  to  bring  against  us  there  too."  So 
we  should;  but  quite  certainly  nothing  east  of  Suez 
fit  to  tackle  the  Oregon  or  the  monster  now  pro 
jected.  How  good  exactly  the  American  battleships 
are  it  is  difficult  for  anybody  but  their  officers  to 
say.  Till  now  they  have  been  built  on  independent 
American  models,  with  little  heed  to  the  practice  of 
Europe.  Certainly  their  gun-power  is  great,  and  they 
are  splendidly  protected.  There  is  hardly  a  gun 
afloat  which,  even  in  theory,  could  pierce  their 
thickest  armour.  On  the  other  hand,  the  coal-supply 
seems  faultily  disposed,  while  their  performances  at 
sea  indicate  either  that  their  officers  have  yet  to 
learn  their  ways  or  that  they  are  not  at  their  best 
in  heavy  weather. 

I  asked  my  authority  why,  considering  the  advan 
tage  to  which  torpedo-boats  could  be  used  in  de 
fending  the  shallow  inlets  of  the  Eastern  coast  of 
this  country,  the  Navy  Department  had  built  so  few. 
They  have,  indeed,  built,  or  are  just  giving  out  to 
contract,  a  couple  of  dozen  or  so ;  but  more  than  half 


CONGKESS    AM)    ITS    MONEY.  41 

of  these  are  big  sea-going  boats,  intended  as  much  to 
take  part  in  a  fleet  action  at  sea  as  for  coast  and 
harbour  defence.  "  Well,"  he  said,  "  our  people  would 
always  be  ready  to  spend  money  for  coast  -  defence. 
It  has  been  the  policy  of  the  Naval  Department  to 
spend  the  money  voted  by  Congress  on  sea -going 

ships "     He  paused.     "While  Congress  is  in  the 

humour,  knowing  that  it  will  always  find  the  money 
for  torpedo-boats,"  I  broke  in  impertinently.  He 
smiled. 

Congress  until  lately  has  been  the  nightmare  of  the 
United  States  Navy,  as  the  Reichstag  is  of  the  German. 
Congress  is  extremely  desirous  of  getting  a  first-class 
article  for  its  money,  but  not  equally  anxious  to  pay 
for  its  article.  My  entertainer  gave  a  curious  instance 
of  this.  The  new  armoured  cruiser  Brooklyn  has 
recently  been  through  her  trials.  She  is  a  very  fast 
boat  undeniably,  and  the  newspapers  duly  proclaimed 
her  the  fastest  in  the  world.  But  I  observed  that  the 
weight  at  which  she  was  tried  was  a  thousand  tons 
less  than  her  working  displacement  will  be — which  is 
equivalent  to  backing  a  colt  for  the  Derby  because 
he  could  win  it  at  eight  stone.  I  asked  him  why  his 
Department  followed  the  inept  custom  of  our  own 
Admiralty  in  the  giving  out  of  trials  that  are  not 
trials.  "  Well,"  he  said,  "  the  explanation  is  really 
simple.  If  the  ship  made  over  a  certain  speed  the 
contractors  were  to  get  a  premium.  If  they  had  built 
the  ship  Congress  wanted  for  the  price  Congress  paid, 


42  THE  U.S.N. 

they'd  have  made  a  considerable  loss  on  it.  So  the 
ship  was  tried  light  so  that  they  should  get  their 
full  premium  ;  then  the  job  paid  them."  Very  wonder 
ful,  we  agreed,  are  the  ways  of  Governments.  But  if 
Mr  M'Kinley  is  elected,  the  navy  looks  forward  to 
generous  supplies  and  good  administration.  In  Eng 
land  Mr  Cleveland  has  got  all  the  credit  for  Civil 
Service  reform;  but  the  navy  dates  its  better  state 
from  the  term  of  Mr  Harrison,  and  looks  to  Mr 
M'Kinley  to  maintain  the  Republican  tradition. 

Beyond  question  there  are  people  here,  and  in 
fluential  people,  who  aspire  to  make  the  United 
States  a  leading  —  not  to  say  the  leading  —  naval 
Power.  And  it  only  needs  a  moment's  thought  upon 
the  boundless  resources  and  the  mechanical  genius  and 
energy  of  this  country  to  realise  that,  if  this  idea 
becomes  general,  it  will  need  a  very  rich  nation,  and 
a  very  determined  nation,  to  keep  step  with  it. 

"We  believe  in  England,"  I  continued,  "that  the 
personal  branch  of  your  navy  is  the  weakest."  "  The 
men  are  improving,"  was  the  reply.  "  A  great  many 
of  them  re-engage  after  their  three  years,  and  going 
about  this  yard  and  the  ships,  as  I  do,  I  can  see  the 
improvement  very  plainly.  But  the  officers  are  too 
old.  Their  experience  is  all  of  the  wooden  ships,  and 
they  have  not  their  heart  in  the  new  navy.  But  they 
block  promotion  for  the  others.  Now  my  contem 
poraries  in  the  service" — he  may  have  been  about 
thirty-five — "  are  all  lieutenants,  and  likely  to  remain 


SENTIMENT   AND   CORRUPTION.  43 

so  fifteen  or  twenty  years.  You  see,  the  senior  men 
all  fought  in  the  war,  and  have  a  great  deal  of  in 
fluence,  and  they  won't  budge." 

Thence  the  talk  drifted  to  the  malign  influence  of 
the  politician.  We  smiled  together  over  the  fact  that 
the  Hartford,  Admiral  Farragut's  old  flagship,  which 
has  been  obsolete  any  time  these  forty  years,  has  been 
fitted  with  new  quick-firing  guns,  whose  strong  recoil 
would  tear  her  venerable  wooden  body  to  pieces  if  she 
ever  tried  to  use  them.  "  The  money  might  as  well 
have  been  thrown  overboard,"  he  said ;  "  but  that's 
democracy,  with  its  sentiment."  But  till  lately  there 
were  worse  things  than  sentiment.  "Before  I  came 
here,"  he  went  on,  "  I  was  stationed  at  a  yard  where 
the  artificers  were  regularly  nominated  as  each  new 
Government  came  in,  by  their  political  clubs.  I  my 
self,  because  I  never  vote  or  take  any  part  in  politics, 
had  applications  made  to  remove  me  from  my  post 
under  both  Democratic  and  Kepublican  Governments, 
on  the  ground  that  I  was  on  the  other  side.  But  I 
resolved  to  have  no  political  nomination  of  workmen, 
and  did  what  I  could  to  get  the  best  men  because  they 
were  the  best.  So  I  was  hauled  up  to  Washington. 
'  This'll  never  do/  said  the  Secretary.  '  If  it  doesn't 
do  my  way,'  I  said,  'it'll  have  to  do  without  me/ 
'Young  man/  said  the  Secretary,  'go  back  and  do 
your  duty ! '  A  Minister,"  explained  my  friend,  broad- 
mindedly,  "  is  only  too  glad  when  he  can  get  an  excuse 
for  stiffening  his  back." 


44  THE   U.S.N. 

"It  seems  to  me  about  your  Admiralty/'  he  went 
on,  "that  it's  too  much  in  the  hands  of  commercial 
people."  "  Such  as  contractors  ? "  "  Yes.  Why  else, 
for  instance,  did  your  navy  keep  using  compound 
armour,  when  everybody  else  knew  it  was  not  the  best 
article  in  the  market  ?  You  nearly  made  us  use  it, 
but  we  had  a  trial,  and  it  was  smashed  to  pieces. 
Why  are  you  so  often  behindhand  with  new  improve 
ments,  unless  it's  to  save  the  contractors  the  expense 
of  new  plant  ?  Now,  with  us,  although  a  law  may  be 
absolutely  corrupt,  a  simple  steal,  it  will  always  be 
executed  with  absolute  honesty.  With  you  it  seems 
the  other  way  about."  With  Mr  Goschen  refusing  to 
lay  down  new  battleships  for  fear  of  inconveniencing 
contractors,  who  are  unable  or  unwilling  to  set  up  the 
plant  for  making  modern  armour-plates,  I  am  afraid  it 
looks  as  if  there  is  some  ground  for  this  comparison. 

"  While  we're  talking  of  England,"  he  added,  "  I  am 
glad  to  have  the  opportunity  of  saying  that  your  Ad 
miralty  has  always  given  us  every  help  and  facility. 
For  instance,  until  quite  lately  you  always  used  to 
train  a  couple  of  students  for  us  at  Greenwich,  though 
this  privilege  was  really  intended  only  for  countries 
that  had  warships  built  in  Great  Britain.  Sometimes 
our  Government  has  repaid  you  with  scant  courtesy 
— for  instance,  they  once  sent  two  students  to  England 
without  even  saying  they  were  coming.  But  in  the 
service  we  recognise  that  you  have  helped  us  very 
much." 


DISCIPLINE  ?  45 

Thus  we  discoursed  as  we  picked  our  way  over 
wires  and  rails  and  scrap-heaps,  under  cranes,  through 
buzzing  machine-shops,  and  across  the  gangways  of 
ships.  There  was  the  low,  black  ram,  the  Katahdin, 
which  fell  short  of  her  contract  speed  on  trial,  but 
was  nevertheless  accepted  in  the  cause  of  Venezuela. 
"  And  what  are  you  going  to  do  with  her,  now  you've 
got  her?"  I  asked.  "Incubus,"  he  replied  tersely. 
There  were  also  the  armoured  monitors  Puritan  and 
Terror,  with  pairs  of  long,  heavy  guns  thrust  out  of 
steel  turrets.  These  are  very  low  in  the  water,  but 
I  was  told  they  are  quite  equal  to  a  voyage  to  the 
West  Indies,  or  even  to  South  America.  Also  there 
was  "  cruiser  Bancroft"  as  the  newspapers  affection 
ately  call  her — a  fat  little  boat,  with  four  4 -inch 
quick-firers  —  which  is  sailing  to-morrow  for  Con 
stantinople,  in  flat  defiance  of  the  Monroe  doctrine. 
The  rest  of  the  fleet  was  where  it  should  be — man 
oeuvring  at  sea.  Such  seamen  as  I  saw  looked  active 
and  resolute  fellows,  as  they  are  bound  to  be.  Perhaps 
it  was  prejudice,  but  I  seemed  to  miss  something  of 
the  elastic  smartness  and  cheery  alertness  that  make 
our  own  bluejacket  the  idol  of  his  countrymen.  The 
truth  is  that  the  free  citizen  of  the  United  States  does 
not  take  kindly  to  discipline.  Brought  up  from  baby 
hood  to  hold  himself  as  good  as,  or  a  shade  better 
than,  anybody  else  in  the  world,  he  hardly  sees  at  first 
why  his  officers  should  order  him,  any  more  than  he 
should  order  them.  I  have  heard,  from  another  source, 


THE  U.S.N. 

that  the  officers  of  American  warships  dare  not  show 
themselves  below  deck  at  night.  This  may  be  an 
exaggeration,  yet  it  is  in  the  services  that  one  would 
expect  to  see  the  reverse  side  of  American  self- 
reliance,  otherwise  so  admirable.  But  as  I  took 
reluctant  leave  of  my  hospitable  entertainer,  and 
wandered  out  into  scorching  Brooklyn,  I  reflected 
that  here  is  a  navy  growing  up  on  which,  with  the 
friendliest  will  in  the  world,  our  own  will  have  hence 
forth  to  keep  a  wide  open  eye. 


BOSTON. 

BOSTON,  September  IS. 

I  HAD  not  been  so  hot  since  August  1893.  Veteran 
New  Yorkers,  who  had  passed  through  the  tremendous 
ordeal  of  a  month  ago,  hurried  about  down-town,  even 
they,  with  brows  beaded  —  nay,  embroidered  —  with 
sweat.  Of  an  evening  crowds  blocked  Madison  Square, 
and  gasped  for  air  as  fishes  for  water ;  the  blare  of  the 
band  was  a  sirocco  in  itself.  When  it  became  too  hot 
to  sleep  it  became  too  hot  to  stay.  New  York,  above 
all  cities,  is  not  the  place  for  the  insomniac.  I  have 
mentioned,  with  premature  enthusiasm,  the  fact  that 
the  Elevated  Railway  runs  trains  every  quarter  of  an 
hour  all  night.  I  did  not  mention — what  I  then  did 
not  know — that  brakes  squeak  and  groan,  engines  puff, 
carriages  rumble,  cable  cars  hum,  gongs  ring,  hoofs 
clatter,  wheels  rattle,  and  sirens  bellow  from  the  Bay 
— all  with  a  stentorian  insistence  by  night  which  they 
did  not  seem  to  possess  by  day.  Moreover,  they  will 
not  fuse  into  a  single  soothing  roar,  like  London's , 


48  BOSTON. 

each  egotistical  sound  compels  the  brain  to  recognise 
it  apart  from  all  the  rest.  "  That's  a  cable  car,"  says 
the  brain ;  "  and  that's  an  elevated  train ;  and  that 
must  be  a  steamer  in  the  Bay  " ;  and  while  the  brain 
is  on  this  sort  of  treadmill  it  is  hopeless  to  wait  for 
sleep. 

So  I  turned  my  back  on  this  splendid  spectacle  of 
restless  energy  to  find  a  spot  less  splendid  and  more 
restful.  Five  hours  in  a  drawing-room  easy-chair, 
with  smoking-room  ditto  to  change  into  at  will,  and  a 
table  laid  in  the  car  for  lunch,  brought  me  to  Boston. 
That  cost  seven  dollars — the  same  sum  to  a  sixpence 
as  the  London  arid  North- Western  charge  from  Liver 
pool  without  the  easy -chair,  or  the  change  to  the 
smoking-car,  or  the  luncheon-table.  No  trouble  to  see 
your  luggage  put  in  by  a  porter :  you  take  it  to  a 
counter  in  the  station,  and  get  a  check  for  it  by  way 
of  receipt.  No  trouble  at  the  other  end :  an  agent 
takes  your  check  before  you  arrive,  and  the  luggage  is 
delivered  at  your  hotel.  True,  this  costs  a  little  extra, 
but  is  it  not  worth  it  ?  If  you  like  you  can  even  get 
a  ticket  and  pay  for  your  cab  before  you  leave  the 
train.  From  all  of  which  considerations  it  appears 
that  we  have  not  yet  learned  the  A  B  C  of  railway 
travelling  in  England.  The  railway  magnates  here  are 
abused  as  monopolists  who  milk  the  public  to  make 
enormous  fortunes  for  themselves,  and  I  doubt  not 
that  they  do.  Only  if  in  the  process  of  milking  and 
making  they  can  still  afford  to  let  the  public  have  an 


A   GERMAN   ASPECT.  49 

article  far  superior  to  ours  at  nearly  the  same  price  — 
that  in  a  country,  mind  you,  where  most  other  things 
are  a  deal  more  expensive — then  what  can  be  wrong 
with  our  own  system  at  home  ? 

The  villages  of  New  England,  as  seen  from  the 
railway,  are  no  more  to  be  mistaken  for  those  of  Old 
England  than  is  New  York  for  an  English  town.  Both 
wear  a  German  rather  than  an  English  face.  In  the 
city  the  painted  houses,  their  rows  of  windows  as  tall 
as  the  rooms  they  lighten,  fronted  by  ironwork  bal 
conies,  arid  flanked  by  lathed  shutters,  could  hardly  bo 
English ;  the  very  type  in  which  the  advertisements 
are  printed  has  a  Continental  air.  Along  Broadway 
two  names  out  of  three  are  German,  and  every  other 
one  of  the  two  German-Jewish.  In  the  country  all 
the  houses  are  of  wood  boards,  painted  white  or  light 
yellow  or  buff  for  the  most  part,  with  shutters  and 
window-frames  picked  out  in  brown  or  green.  To  the 
English  eye  they  are  oddly  like  pictures  on  the  lid  of 
a  German  box  of  toys. 

The  country  looks  a  hard  one  to  squeeze  a  living 
out  of.  I  saw  a  few  brown  stooks  and  dishevelled 
fields  of  maize,  and  some  stock  at  pasture;  but  not 
much.  Most  of  it  is  woodland.  Here  and  there  a 
patch  of  flame -coloured  fern  spoke  of  the  touch  of 
autumn,  or  a  green  tree  put  forth  a  sudden  branch  as 
red  as  blood.  But  the  telling  feature  of  the  land 
scape  was  once  more  its  advertisements.  Across  the 
meadows,  down  the  curling  reaches  of  the  rivers,  from 


50  BOSTON. 

every  gap  in  the  woods,  peeped  the  persistent  intima 
tion  that  sarsaparilla  makes  the  weak  strong,  and  that 
children  cry  for  Castoria.  Every  rock  of  any  size  and 
flatness  was  blazoned  with  these  same  great  truths. 
Whether  we  learned  it  from  America,  or  America 
from  us,  I  do  not  know.  But  I  feel  that  I  too  shall 
cry  for  Castoria  if  it  is  to  dog  me  thus  over  a  whole 
continent. 

Boston  is  fringed  with  wooden  houses,  but  the 
interior  is  more  substantial.  You  are  struck  imme 
diately  with  its  decent,  comparatively  English  air  as 
contrasted  with  New  York.  The  houses  have  not 
shot  up  and  gone  to  seed ;  they  preserve  an  even  sky 
line,  and  you  see  whole  terraces  built  on  a  single  plan. 
Not  but  what  Boston  possesses  features  of  useful 
ugliness,  which  even  New  York  lacks.  The  tram 
cars,  for  instance,  which  all  go  by  electricity,  have 
sticking  up  from  the  roof  of  each  an  inclined  rod 
rather  like  the  back  leg  of  an  easel,  which  runs  along 
a  wire  overhead.  The  effect  of  these  wires,  together 
with  a  crowd  of  others  in  the  telegraph  and  telephone 
services,  is  as  if  a  gigantic  spider  had  spun  a  web  low 
down  over  every  street,  and  was  waiting  somewhere 
on  the  roofs  to  pounce  on  any  Bostonian  who  should 
invent  a  flying-machine  and  endeavour  to  fly  through. 
As  for  the  tram-cars,  Boston  is  a  paradise  of  them. 
Never  have  I  seen  a  tramway  service  more  thoroughly 
developed.  In  the  busy  parts  of  the  city  they  are 
crawling  along  every  street  in  long  lines  at  a  few 


THE  BOSTON  PARKS  SYSTEM.          51 

yards' — sometimes  but  a  few  inches' — distance  apart. 
Eed  and  blue,  brown  and  purple,  yellow  and  light 
green  and  dark  green,  they  wind  and  circle  in  and 
out,  between  and  across  each  other  as  if  they  were 
engaged  in  an  elaborate  tram-car  ballet.  The  very 
Post  Office  has  a  neat  white  tram-car  of  its  own, 
wherein  it  transports  the  mails. 

That  which  lifts  Boston  from  a  busy,  rather  unim 
pressive  provincial  town  into  an  example  to  the  world 
is  the  system  of  its  public  parks.  They  are  not 
finished  yet — nothing  in  America  is,  except  some 
of  the  politicians — but  when  they  are  they  will  be 
a  rare  monument  of  wise  and  generous  civic  spirit. 
Boston  may  then  increase  to  a  city  of  ten  million 
souls,  but  it  will  yet  be  possible  to  live  in  the  very 
centre  and  get  daily  fresh  air.  The  parks  form, 
roughly  speaking,  a  wide  ring  round  the  present  city, 
connected  in  great  part  by  a  band  of  broad,  well- 
timbered  avenues.  I  set  out  the  other  morning  to 
inspect  the  parks  system  in  an  even  downpour  that 
would  have  made  an  inquiry  into  the  surface  drainage 
more  pertinent.  First  came  Boston  Common,  where 
they  play  baseball,  hockey,  football,  and  the  like. 
It  is  not  unlike  the  grassy  parts  of  Hyde  Park,  with 
the  exception  that  many  of  the  walks  are  paved — an 
improvement  of  which  this  particular  morning  clearly 
demonstrated  the  prudence.  Next  was  the  Public 
Gardens  adjoining  the  Common — as  gracefully  laid 
out  as  you  could  wish  to  see.  Palms  of  every  kind, 


52  BOSTON. 

hydrangeas,  with  thick,  nodding  heads  of  flesh- 
coloured  blossoms,  ponds  with  water-lilies  of  every 
size  and  colour  —  blue,  crimson,  pink,  yellow,  and 
white,  all  subtropical  plants  and  shrubs,  beds  of 
cunningly  combined  flowers  and  foliage  —  cannas, 
balsams,  begonias,  indiarubbers,  coleus  —  make  up 
between  them  a  garden  of  the  rarest  beauty.  Only 
one  fault  could  I  find  in  the  Garden  or  the  Com 
mon,  and  I  mention  it  because  I  may  never  have 
the  chance  of  using  the  word  again  in  this 
country.  They  are  just  a  little  too  small.  But 
you  cannot  say  the  same  of  Franklin  Park, 
wherein  the  whole  half-million  or  so  of  Boston's 
inhabitants  could  all  disport  themselves  without 
jostling.  On  the  day  I  saw  it  Franklin  Park  con 
tained  just  one  person  and  the  rain,  but  that  was 
more  the  rain's  fault  than  the  park's.  Laid  out  with 
cunning  imitation  of  a  natural  wildness,  it  extends 
for  mile  on  mile  of  grass  and  thicket.  Then  there  is 
the  belt  of  water  and  water-plants,  called  the  Back 
Bay  Fens.  No  doubt  they  are  most  refreshing  in 
summer,  but  to-day,  when  Boston  was  one  vast  fen 
itself,  they  were  almost  too  fenny  for  long  and  close 
acquaintance. 

The  architectural  glories  of  Boston  centre,  I 
suppose,  in  Copley  Square.  Here  is  the  Public 
Library,  the  Art  Gallery,  the  Cathedral.  The  last  is 
built  in  what  I  may  take  the  liberty  of  calling  the 
American  style  —  a  mixture  of  Corinthian,  Gothic, 


CLEAN   BOSTON.  53 

and  Byzantine,  with  colour  thrown  in.  The  Art 
Gallery  is  pretty  enough  with  its  two  colours  of  warm 
red  brick,  and  the  Public  Library  is  a  thoroughly 
respectable-looking  institution.  Inside  it  contains  an 
adorably  simple  fresco  by  M.  Puvis  de  Chavannes  and 
an  appallingly  complex  Biblical  allegory  by  Mr  Sargent. 
When  the  good  Bostonian  dies  it  will  be  granted  her 
to  sit  for  ever  and  ever  before  this  work  with  a 
diagram  and  a  numbered  key.  For  Boston  is  held 
the  most  cultivated  of  American  cities,  but  perhaps 
I  may  say  that  its  true  merit  seemed  rather  its 
cleanness.  My  fondest  recollection  will  be  of  Con 
stitution  Avenue,  with  its  double  row  of  trees  in  the 
middle,  its  broad,  well-laid  roadways  on  each  side,  its 
red-brick  pavements,  fresh  lawns,  and  creeper-grown 
stone  houses.  A  clean,  sweet,  wholesome  remem 
brance,  breathing  unostentatious  comfort  and  i 
ligent,  refined,  golden  mediocrity. 


64 


VIL 

A  STATE   ELECTION. 

BOSTON,  September  15. 

IT  was  my  own  fault.  Why  should  I  expect  Port 
land,  Me.,  to  be  a  seething  centre  of  political  activity  ? 
Yet  I  did.  One  gets  strange  superstitions  about 
places  one  has  never  been  to.  I  had  seen  Portland 
on  the  map  so  often,  that  now  I  was  within  a  short 
four  hours  of  it  it  seemed  wicked  to  leave  it  un- 
visited.  Moreover,  there  was  an  election  in  Maine — 
not  the  real  Presidential  performance,  but  a  sort  of 
rehearsal  for  the  election  of  a  Governor,  a  Congress 
man  or  two,  State  senators  and  legislators,  and  vari 
ous  constitutional  oddments.  Nothing  of  national 
importance,  of  course.  Maine  has  been  Eepublican 
all  its  life  except  once,  when  it  went  Democratic  by 
pure  accident.  And  in  any  case  the  real  battle  of 
this  election  will  be  fought  neither  in  the  extreme 
East  nor  in  the  outer  West.  It  is  in  the  centre  round 
Chicago — in  Michigan,  Indiana,  Illinois,  Wisconsin, 
Iowa — that  the  key  of  the.  position  lies,  and  the  can- 


AN  EVERY-DAY  RAILWAY  TRAIN.  55 

didate  who  carries  these  States  will  carry  the  country- 
As  for  this  part  of  the  country  I  need  only  quote 
the  words  of  a  gentleman  encountered  in  the  train. 
"  Bryan  ?  Bryan  would  stand  no  more  chance  in  Maine 
than  a  paper  man  in  hell."  And  if  you  weigh  for  a 
moment  the  exact  degree  of  chance  a  paper  man 
would  stand  at  that  temperature,  you  will  get  a 
rough  measure  of  the  prospects  of  free  silver  in  New 
England. 

However,  I  thought  I  would  accustom  myself 
gradually  to  the  flamboyant  methods  of  western 
electioneering;  so  I  rose  up  early  in  the  morning, 
took  a  ticket  for  Portland,  and  climbed  up  into  a 
smoking-car.  I  then  discovered  that  my  first  rail 
way  journey  in  America  of  two  days  before  had  been 
more  than  ordinarily  luxurious.  This  car  had  not 
easy -chairs,  but  only  broad -seated,  broad  -  backed, 
velvet  -  cushioned  lounges  ranged  down  its  whole 
length.  The  car  was  full  of  men ;  the  smoke  of  them 
thickened  the  air,  and  they  spat  steadily.  Down  the 
middle  aisle  a  boy  marched  continually  to  and  fro 
hawking  a  diversity  of  wares  that  would  have  brought 
jealousy  into  the  soul  of  Mr  Whiteley.  Each  time 
he  retired  to  his  end  of  the  car  I  thought  he  was 
done  with  at  last;  each  time  he  popped  out  again 
with  something  new  to  sell.  "  Cigars,  gents ;  cigars  ; 
playing-cards ! "  was  the  first  offer.  Then  came  the 
Boston  morning  papers  ;  then  "  Chocolates,  fresh  made 
this  morning ! "  then  "  The  pocket  drinking-cup,  re- 


56  A   STATE  ELECTION. 

duced  to  fifteen  cents ;  only  fifteen,  gents,  for  the 
pocket  drinking-cup !  *  Next  he  sprang  forth  with 
the  September  magazines,  then  the  comic  papers,  then 
chewing-gum ;  after  that  I  made  no  further  attempt 
to  keep  up  with  his  infinite  variety. 

Presently  came  along  the  conductor.  I  showed  my 
ticket ;  he  took  it,  and  with  a  swift  movement  slipped 
a  blank  pink  ticket  into  the  band  of  my  hat.  It  was 
a  shock  at  first,  but  as  he  went  round  the  whole  car 
labelling  every  passenger  with  his  own  appropriate 
colour,  I  supposed  it  was  all  right.  I  wore  his  colours 
in  my  cap  like  a  knight  of  chivalry  for  four  hours,  and 
there  was  no  more  bother  about  tickets. 

Soon  there  rose  up  round  me  a  spirited,  if  incon 
clusive,  discussion  on  the  relative  merits  of  the  gold 
and  silver  dollar,  accompanied  by  a  mellifluous  stream 
of  the  easiest  and  most  finished  profanity  I  ever  heard 
outside  the  British  army.  Everybody  does  it,  both 
cussing  and  discussing — arguing  out  the  question  ap 
parently  rather  from  a  personal  friendship  for  gold  01 
silver  as  a  metal  than  from  any  definite  economic 
principles  as  to  their  due  ratio.  Thus  in  a  cloud  of 
smoke,  swearing,  and  argument  we  were  whirled 
through  New  England. 

In  due  time  we  drew  into  a  fair-sized  station  ol 
Continental  appearance.  Everything  here  suggests 
the  Continent  rather  than  England:  you  do  not  enter 
the  train  from  a  platform  as  with  us,  but  climb  from 
the  level  of  the  rails,  while  the  carriages,  as  everybody 


"EVANGELINE"  UP  TO  DATE.  57 

knows,  are  of  the  long  foreign  type.  The  station  was 
Portland,  and  Portland  was  enchanting.  It  was  like 
a  canto  of  Longfellow's  "  Evangeline "  brought  up  to 
date.  The  low  stone-built  station  opens  on  to  a  wide 
lawn  of  rich  shaven  grass.  The  pavements  are  of  red 
brick,  as  in  Boston,  but  with  broad  ribbons  of  turf 
between  them  and  the  road.  The  houses  are  part 
spotless  wood,  part  sober  red  brick.  Every  road  is 
fringed  with  shady  trees.  It  is  as  sweet  and  whole 
some  as  the  wholesomest  parts  of  Boston,  with  the 
added  grace  that  no  other  parts  meet  the  eye.  For 
the  city  is  set  on  a  hill,  and  between  each  pair  of 
houses  stretches  a  long  vista  over  the  rolling  green  of 
Maine  bordered  with  faint  hills,  or  else  over  the  still 
blue  Atlantic,  with  no  boundary  but  the  sky.  Down 
where  the  clipper  schooners  lie  there  are  wharves  and 
a  lumber  trade,  and  that  mars  the  idyll  a  little,  for 
America  is  not  the  land  to  import  unnecessary  pic- 
turesqueness  into  the  lumber  trade.  But  that  you  do 
not  see ;  it  is  under  the  hill.  Likewise  there  are 
electric  tramways  and  wires  overhead ;  but  these 
droop  gracefully  between  the  trees,  as  if  they  were 
only  waiting  for  Chinese  lanterns  and  an  illumination. 
And  if  there  are  electric  cars,  the  town  is  also  full  of 
horses  and  dogs,  clean-bred  and  well-liking  beasts  each 
one  of  them.  The  men  and  women  are  open-faced, 
upstanding,  and  healthy,  slow  and  laconic  in  speech, 
a  little  hard  in  feature,  and  a  little  dour  in  disposi 
tion — for  I  take  it  that  ease  does  not  come  unasked 


58  A  STATE  ELECTION. 

to  folks  iii  Maine — yet  honest  and  courteous  in  their 
own  fashion.  Altogether  a  comely,  cleanly,  kindly  bit 
of  New  England ;  and  lie  who  likes  living  in  a  small 
town  might  do  very  much  worse  than  emigrate  to 
Portland,  Me. 

But  where  was  the  election  all  this  while  ?  Where 
were  the  flaming  carriages  I  had  expected  to  be  meet 
ing  the  electors,  who,  I  knew,  were  coming  in  by  this 
train?  Where  were  the  favours,  the  banners,  the 
posters,  the  brass  bands,  and  the  processions  ?  Things 
looked  more  like  Sabbath  afternoon  than  the  election 
day  of  the  century.  The  fun  must  be  higher  up  the 
town,  I  said  to  myself,  and  took  my  habitual  five 
cents'  worth  of  electricity.  Presently  I  descried  a 
huge  blue  poster.  Here  it  is,  I  shouted  inwardly; 
but  no:  it  bore  merely  the  name  of  Jolly  Nellie 
M'Henry  in  "A  Night  in  New  York." 

It  must  be  higher  still.  Presently  we  passed  under 
a  couple  of  banners  hung  right  across  the  street,  bear 
ing  the  respective  features  of  M'Kinley  and  Hobart 
and  Bryan  and  Sewall.  But  those  you  see  every 
where:  there  was  still  no  whisper  of  an  election.  I 
got  down  from  the  car  and  walked  about  the  town. 
Suddenly  I  caught,  afar  off,  a  glint  of  scarlet  and 
gold.  There  came  slowly  up  the  street  a  resplendent 
waggon  with  six  horses,  in  which  a  brass  band  made 
deafening  music.  Here  was  the  true  Transatlantic 
electioneering  at  last !  It  came  nearer,  and  behind 
it  appeared  a  file  of  gorgeously  caparisoned  horse- 


AN    UNOBTRUSIVE  ELECTION.  59 

men.  Better  and  better.  I  thought  of  the  mounted 
farriers  of  our  Hyde  Park  demonstrations,  but  it  was 
a  new  thing  to  find  them  in  a  contested  election.  Now 
I  was  about  to  see.  By  this  time  I  was  abreast  of 
the  leading  car.  I  looked  eagerly  beyond ;  and  then 
— and  then — a  clown  driving  two  donkeys  tandem, 
and  behind  him  a  swaying  elephant  with  an  adver 
tisement  on  its  back :  "  Smith  and  Seebright's  World- 
Eenowned  Circus  " ! 

I  walked  desperately  into  the  nearest  hotel  and 
asked  if  somebody  would  kindly  direct  me  to  the 
election.  Then,  at  last,  I  found  it.  Two  undistin- 
guishable  committee-rooms,  hidden  away  behind  shops, 
and  a  polling-booth.  No  colours,  no  canvassers,  no 
hauling  of  reluctant  voters  to  the  ballot,  no  candidates 
driving  round  four-in-hand.  If  this  was  an  American 
election,  give  me  staid  England.  But  it  seems  my 
ignorance  had  betrayed  me  again.  In  this  country 
the  excitement  ceases  on  the  eve  of  the  poll,  and 
nothing  remains  for  the  actual  day  but  the  quiet  gar 
nering  of  the  crop  of  votes.  Confound  my  ignorance ! 
I  had  lost  a  day. 

However,  I  did  observe  that  an  American  polling- 
booth  is  not  unlike  the  same  article  as  found  among 
us.  Shavings  were  on  the  floor;  a  bar  stretched 
across  the  room,  and  on  the  far  side  of  it  were 
little  loose -boxes  round  the  wall  for  the  voters  to 
vote  in.  I  saw  half-a-dozen  laboriously  discharging 
the  duties  of  free  citizenship.  It  is  no  light  matter 


60  A   STATE   ELECTION. 

voting  at  an  election  like  this.  Besides  your  Governor, 
your  Congressman,  your  Senators,  and  members  of  legis 
lature,  you  have  to  elect  a  Sheriff,  a  County  attorney, 
a  County  commissioner,  and  other  functionaries  whose 
functions  I  know  not.  The  form  of  the  ballot-paper 
emphasises  what  I  had  noticed  before — the  enormous 
stringency  of  the  party  tie  in  this  country.  Our 
voting  -  papers  simply  give  you  the  names  of  Smith 
and  Jones,  and  if  you  don't  know  which  is  which 
the  country  is  not  going  to  help  you.  The  American 
ballot-paper  marks  off  the  whole  list  of  each  party's 
candidates  in  a  separate  column,  with  its  denomina 
tion —  Eepublican,  Democratic,  and  so  on.  If  you 
want  to  vote  a  straight  ticket,  as  the  instructions 
put  it,  you  just  make  a  cross  at  the  top  of  the  list. 
If  you  want  to  split  the  ticket — that  is,  vote  for 
some  of  the  party  and  not  others — you  cross  out  the 
name  you  object  to,  and  write  in  its  stead  that  of 
your  fancy.  When  the  State  thus  conspires  with 
party  discipline,  it  must  require  very  solid  strength 
of  mind  for  a  man  to  vote  according  to  his  own 
judgment.  It  is  one  of  the  good  results  of  this  elec 
tion — so  several  thoughtful  people  have  assured  rne — 
that  more  voters  will  split  the  ticket  this  time  than 
ever  before.  Now,  a  man  who  has  once  broken  away 
from  his  party  will  do  so  again  if  he  thinks  right; 
thus  is  formed  a  body  of  voters  who  will  turn  elec 
tions  on  their  own  independent  opinion.  The  nucleus 
of  such  a  body  came  with  the  many  Republicans  who 


BREAKING    THE    LIQUOR   LAW.  61 

voted  against  the  M'Kinley  tnriff.  Now  will  come  an 
even  larger  contingent  of  Democrats,  supporters  of  the 
gold  currency.  The  creation  of  such  an  independent 
electorate  should  be  a  powerful  aid  to  sound  govern 
ment  in  the  future. 

Having  got  this  wrong-end-of-a-telescopic  view  of 
an  American  election,  the  only  diversion  left  was  to 
break  the  Maine  Liquor  Law.  It  was  put  into  my 
head  by  the  genial  salutation  of  a  gentleman  who 
could  only  just  keep  cm  hia  legs.  In  Maine,  as  you 
know,  the  buying  and  selling  of  alcoholic  liquor  is 
unconditionally  forbidden  under  I  do  not  quite  know 
what  penalty.  I  thought  I  would  try  to  incur  that 
unknown  penalty.  Bethinking  me  that  the  barber  is 
the  friend  of  man,  I  went  in  and  was  shaved.  "  You 
can't  buy  a  drink  here,  I'm  told,"  I  began.  "  No," 
said  the  barber,  stolidly.  "  I  suppose  people  do, 
though."  "  I  don't  know  much  about  it.  I  fancy 

there's  a  druggist  or  two "  Then,  as  if  by  a 

powerful  effort  of  memory,  "  There's  a  bar  right  here 
where  you  can  get  it,"  he  said. 

Following  his  directions  I  walked  down  a  long 
passage,  and  at  the  back  of  the  house,  among  sculleries 
and  the  like,  there  was  a  bar  indeed.  "  Whisky,"  said 
I  hardily,  and  whisky  it  was.  It  was  exceptionally 
good  whisky,  and  it  was  no  dearer  than  anywhere  else. 
"  Isn't  this  what  they  call  a  Prohibition  State  ? "  I 
asked.  "  It's  supposed  to  be,"  grinned  the  bar- tender. 
"  But  don't  the  police  or  somebody  come  down  on 


62  A   STATE   ELECTION. 

you  ? "  "  Now  and  then  they  take  it  in  their  head  to 
make  a  fuss."  Such  is  temperance  legislation  in  its 
chosen  seat.  It  was  impossible  that  this  bar,  in  the 
very  centre  of  the  town,  should  not  be  known  and 
used  by  everybody  that  cared  to  know  and  use  it. 
While  I  was  there  a  working  man  came  in  and  bought 
a  bottle  of  whisky  and  took  it  away  with  him.  He 
remarked  ironically  that  he  had  dyspepsia ;  and  I 
expect  he  has  by  now.  Thus  is  the  law  brought  into 
contempt,  and  thus  I  became  a  criminal.  Portland  in 
the  New  World — who  knows  ? — may  be  for  me  the 
first  downward  stepping  -  stone  to  Portland  in  the 
Old 


63 


VIII. 
A  STATE  CONVENTION. 

BUFFALO,  September  17. 

THE  scenery  of  Buffalo,  to  the  eye  of  the  fleeting 
stranger,  is  not  unlike  that  of  Clerkenwell.  The 
houses  of  one  street  appear  to  have  fronts  to  them ; 
the  rest  are  seemingly  all  backs.  But  on  the  morning 
of  my  arrival  Buffalo  had  done  its  best,  or  part  of  its 
best,  to  cover  up  its  nakedness.  Was  it  not  the  seat 
of  the  Democratic  Convention  of  the  State  of  New 
York  ?  M'Kinley  and  Hobart,  Bryan  and  Sewall, 
flaunted  their  familiar  features  on  huge  banners,  which 
straddled  across  the  widest  streets.  All  the  principal 
buildings  wore  American  ensigns  ;  the  hotels,  head 
quarters  of  delegations,  were  wholly  swaddled  in  them. 
The  streets  were  full,  and  in  the  corridors  of  the  hotels 
it  was  as  difficult  to  move  as  it  is  in  Cheapside  on 
Lord  Mayor's  Day.  "  You  won't  see  any  Democrats," 
the  host  of  my  hotel  at  Niagara  had  sardonically  pro 
mised  me  on  parting ;  "  you'll  see  a  lot  of  Anarchists, 
that's  all."  I  can  only  say  that  they  were  the  best 


64  A  STATE  CONVENTION. 

nourished  Anarchists  I  have  ever  had  the  privilege  of 
looking  on.  Tammany  Hall — the  great  Democratic 
order  of  New  York — had  invaded  Buffalo  twelve  hun 
dred  strong,  in  six  special  trains ;  had  marched  in  six 
abreast,  with  colours  flying,  and  a  band  and  red  fire. 
The  Anarchists  of  Tammany  are  mainly  Irishmen  of 
huge  proportions,  whether  you  measure  them  perpen 
dicularly  or  by  circumference.  In  England  you  would 
set  them  down  on  sight  as  meat-salesmen  from  Smith- 
field  ;  in  America — so,  at  least,  I  am  informed  by  their 
enemies  —  they  mostly  draw  handsome  salaries  from 
the  city  or  county  of  New  York  without  making  it 
altogether  plain  what  they  do  for  them.  Every  Tam 
many  man  wore  on  his  ample  bosorn  a  badge  some 
eight  inches  long ;  at  the  top  a  silver  bar — it  was  gilt 
at  the  last  Convention,  whereby  hangs  a  tale — in 
scribed  with  the  mystic  name  of  Tammany,  then  a 
ribbon  of  the  United  States  colours,  and  a  medallion 
hanging  from  that  with  the  picture  of  an  Indian  brave. 
It  appears  that  Tammany  plays  at  being  savages,  with 
braves  and  sachems,  just  as  some  of  our  people  play  at 
being  knights  and  dames  of  chivalry.  Then  there 
were  the  country  delegates.  Every  man  carried  a 
badge  in  his  button-hole,  and  from  two  to  six  ribbons, 
placards,  or  flowers  in  his  coat.  But  these  wore 
heavier  boots,  moved  more  slowly,  spoke  less  volubly. 
Most  of  them  wore  black  broadcloth  frock-coats  and 
trousers  and  black  wideawake  hats;  they  looked  like 
village  deacons,  as  I  make  no  doubt  they  were. 


THE   DEPRAVITY    OF   SENATOR    HILL.  65 

The  four  hundred  and  odd  delegates — representing 
the  Democrats  of  a  population  of  some  six  millions 
— had  met,  first,  to  decide  the  policy  on  which  they 
would  fight  the  New  York  State  elections  as  well  as 
the  Presidential  contest ;  and  secondly,  who  should  be 
their  candidates.  The  policy  is  called  the  platform, 
and  the  list  of  candidates  the  ticket.  There  was 
a  possibility  of  sharp  fighting  between  the  more 
enthusiastic  advocates  of  Mr  Bryan  and  silver  and 
such  Democrats  as  preserve  a  hankering  after  the 
gold  standard.  The  head  of  the  latter  is  Senator 
Hill,  an  unrivalled  political  gymnast,  who  has  for 
many  years  played  a  prominent  part  in  the  affairs 
of  this  State.  On  the  present  currency  issue  he 
has  performed  prodigious  feats  of  balancing,  and  no 
body —  himself  least  of  all  —  knows  to  which  side 
he  inclines  from  day  to  day.  "The  spectacle  of 
moral  turpitude,"  as  an  influential  organ  here  has 
genially  remarked,  "  which  Senator  Hill  has  recently 
presented  affords  an  exhibition  of  the  depravity  of 
human  nature,  which  goes  far  to  justify  the  Cal 
vin  istic  doctrine  of  the  utter  corruption  of  man." 
This  was  no  gutter  journal,  it  should  be  said,  but 
a  weekly  paper  of  something  the  same  standing  as 
Black  and  White,  whence  may  be  inferred  the  fact 
that  political  controversy  on  this  side  the  Atlantic 
is  at  least  outspoken.  Without  going  so  far  as  this, 
I  had  expected  at  least  some  lively  scenes  on  the 
part  of  the  Senator's  friends  and  foes.  That  I  was 

E 


66  A  STATE  CONVENTION. 

disappointed  —  that  the  Senator  did  not  face  the 
music,  that  his  friends  and  enemies  maintained 
comparative  calm,  that  the  Convention,  to  be  frank, 
was  undeniably  tame — is  unfortunate,  but  it  cannot 
be  laid  to  my  charge. 

The  place  of  meeting  was  the  Buffalo  Music  Hall. 
To  the  Eastern  eye  it  looks  like  a  sort  of  cross  be 
tween  a  concert-hall  and  a  suburban  mission-room. 
About  a  dozen  American  ensigns  were  disposed 
about  the  stage,  and  there  were  two  portraits  of 
Bryan  and  one  of  Sewall.  I  have  yet  to  meet,  by 
the  way,  anybody  who  takes  the  least  interest  in 
Sewall.  The  decorations  as  a  whole,  I  was  assured, 
were  painfully  inadequate  to  the  occasion,  The 
gallery  was  crowded  with  spectators,  but  the  leaders 
on  the  stage  and  the  delegates  on  the  floor  were 
deplorably  unpunctual.  The  truth  was,  so  the 
Democratic  papers  said,  that  this  was  a  delegates' 
convention  —  not  a  cut-and-dried,  boss-ridden  affair, 
where  the  representatives  from  the  local  organisa 
tions  had  nothing  to  do  but  say  "  Ay "  to  a  motion 
given  out  from  the  chair.  The  delegates  were  them 
selves  to  decide  on  the  platform  and  the  ticket. 
The  result  was  that  the  delegates  —  worthy  souls 
— believing  this,  had  sat  up  so  late  the  night  be 
fore  talking,  talking,  talking  about  what  they  would 
do,  that  they  found  it  quite  impossible  to  come  to 
the  hall  and  do  it  until  an  hour  over  time  the  next 
morning.  By  that  time  they  had  all  straggled  in 


POPULAR  ORATORY.  67 

and  laboriously  sorted  themselves  according  to  their 
counties,  and  the  proceedings  began. 

The  larikest  chairman  of  modern  times  was  duly 
elected,  and  delivered  a  long  address  on  the  Silver 
question.  Without  doubt  the  Silver  question  is 
technically  the  one  issue  of  this  campaign ;  every 
speech  dealt  with  it,  just  as  every  conversation  you 
overhear  in  a  train  or  the  street  is  dealing  with 
it.  It  is  not  an  invigorating  subject  for  a  popular 
harangue.  "To  annul  either  of  the  metals  as 
money  is  to  abridge  the  quantity  of  the  circulat 
ing  medium,"  is  hardly  the  sentence  you  would  ex 
pect  to  set  popular  passion  aflame,  any  more  than 
the  chorus,  "We'll  eradicate  the  gold-bugs  with  our 
16  to  1,"  is  the  ideal  of  a  rousing  political  song. 
On  the  other  hand,  this  whole  nation's  attention  is 
concentrated  on  business  and  money -making  to  a 
degree  almost  incredible  even  to  an  Englishman, 
while  the  very  high  average  of  its  intelligence 
guides  it  through  mazes  of  abstruse  financial  argu 
ment  which  would  hopelessly  befog  the  ordinary 
English  voter.  Yet  this  chairman's  speech,  as  well 
as  a  dozen  or  so  others  I  heard,  were  very  admirable 
popular  oratory,  judge  them  by  what  standard  you 
will.  Perhaps  they  recalled  the  street  preacher  a 
little,  in  matter,  in  intonation,  in  delivery.  The 
speakers,  like  the  ordinary  preacher,  dealt  very  ex 
tensively  in  vain  repetitions.  But  then  you  must 
the  hall  was  a  very  large  one,  and  it| 


68  A   STATE   CONVENTION. 

was  difficult  for  any  voice  to  carry  in  it.  The  repe 
tition  is  meant  to  catch  the  ears  that  the  first  state 
ment  escaped. 

It  struck  me  as  rather  curious  that  the  Convention 
endured  patiently  the  unending  reproduction  of  argu 
ments  that  every  man  must  have  read  twice  a-day  in 
the  public  press — for  the  American  is  seldom  without 
a  newspaper  in  his  hand.  But  I  concluded  that  he 
does  not  want  his  public  speakers  to  instruct  him. 
He  wants  to  be  amused,  tickled,  flogged  up  to  enthusi 
asm.  That,  with  the  size  of  the  normal  American 
public  meeting,  has  produced  a  far  more  declamatory 
kind  of  rhetoric  than  we  know  at  home.  Every 
speaker  gesticulates  freely  and  with  ease  and  effect. 
Biblical  allusions,  which  would  be  profane  among  us, 
are  received,  in  all  good  faith,  with  clapping  of  hands. 
One  speaker  turned  in  an  impassioned  apostrophe  to 
the  picture  of  Mr  Bryan,  which  hung  at  the  wings. 
"  O,  William  Jennings  Bryan  ! "  he  cried,  lifting  both 
hands  as  if  in  adoration.  An  English  audience  would 
have  choked  with  laughter ;  here  it  was  a  very  telling 
point.  No  doubt  the  necessity  of  talking  to  an 
audience  so  large  that  it  is  a  constant  strain  to  be 
heard,  crushes  out  the  finer  effects  of  oratory.  It 
leads  to  the  use  of  very  long  -  sustained  sentences, 
difficult  to  follow,  and  leaving  their  impression  rather 
on  the  emotions  than  the  reason.  Yet  nobody  can 
either  hear  or  read  even  such  ordinary,  everyday 


A  SCENE.  69 

speeches  as  those  of  the  Buffalo  Convention  without 
allowing  them  real  dignity  and  eloquence. 

After  the  chairman's  speech  came  the  platform, 
submitted  by  the  committee  that  had  drawn  it  up. 
It  supported  the  Chicago  Convention  and  the  Bryan 
candidature.  It  freely  charged  its  opponents  in  the 
State  Legislature  with  the  grossest  corruption  and  any 
other  vices  it  could  lay  its  pen  to.  It  made  an  ingeni 
ous  bid  for  the  cyclist  vote — which  must  be  prodigious 
here — by  pressing  for  better  roads.  On  this  question 
of  the  platform  arose  a  promising  gust  of  disorder. 
When  it  was  put  to  the  meeting  there  arose — as 
appeared  from  the  gallery — a  broad,  black-coated  back, 
a  wagging  bald  head,  and  an  Irish  accent,  raised  in 
vigorous  protest.  In  an  instant  every  delegate  and 
most  spectators  sprang  up — some  to  their  feet,  some  to 
their  seats— and  whooped  "  No,  no,"  "  Sit  down,"  "  Yes, 
yes,"  "  Turn  him  out,"  "  Let  him  speak."  In  the  midst 
of  which  the  back  and  head  were  reinforced  by  an 
upraised  arm,  brandishing  the  Bryan  revolving  fan — 
silver-foil,  price  10  cents — until  the  fan  part  flew  off 
towards  the  ceiling,  leaving  the  ineffective  stump  be 
hind.  The  nape  of  the  neck  began  to  get  purple — 
surely,  thought  I,  here  is  the  malign  influence  of 
Senator  Hill  at  last.  But  alas  !  no.  It  appeared  that 
this  gentleman  merely  demanded  a  poll,  and  when 
the  poll  was  taken  it  appeared  that  he  had  written 
a  speech  explaining  his  vote.  And  when  he  had  made 


70  A   STATE   CONVENTION. 

his  speech  he  announced — what  the  speech  had  wholly 
ignored — that  he  was  going  to  vote  just  the  same  way 
as  everybody  else.  He  affably  acknowledged  that  he 
did  not  believe  in  free  silver.  But  then,  he  said,  the 
best  experts  differed  on  the  subject,  and  would  con 
tinue  to  differ.  Should  he  separate  himself  from  the 
party  of  Democracy  for  a  trifle  like  that?  Never! 
Everybody  applauded  the  sentiment,  and  I  wondered 
what,  then,  was  he  voting  for. 

Then  came  the  nomination  of  the  Convention's  can 
didate  for  Governor.  The  choice  lay  between  gen 
tlemen  of  the  names  of  Thacher  and  Sulzer,  with  an 
outsider  named  Porter  to  make  the  running.  "  How 
could  we  go  back  to  Jefferson  County,"  asked  the 
nominator  of  Mr  Porter,  in  plaintive  apology,  "and 
tell  our  people  that  we  had  failed  to  put  him  in 
nomination  ? "  But  the  real  battle  was  obviously 
between  Messrs  Thacher  and  Sulzer.  The  latter  is 
the  younger  and  the  more  ardent  advocate  of  free 
silver;  at  every  mention  of  his  name  his  partisans 
flung  hats  and  handkerchiefs,  newspapers  and  um 
brellas,  into  the  air.  Mr  Thacher,  it  appeared,  had 
only  a  few  months  ago  publicly  warned  an  audience 
against  letting  the  selfish  interests  of  the  owners  of 
silver  bullion  lead  them  from  the  safe  path  of  mono 
metallism.  Yet — and  this  was  very  significant — it 
was  assumed  that,  whatever  his  personal  opinions,  he 
would  "  loyally "  support  free  coinage,  because  the 
Convention  had  declared  in  favour  of  it.  The  Diving 


A  STAMPEDE.  71 

Eight  of  the  Majority  was  formulated  almost  in  set 
terms.  Not  merely  that  the  majority  will  have  its 
way,  and  that  on  the  whole  it  ought  to  have  its  way ; 
that  every  intelligent  Englishman  believes.  But  also 
that  he  is  no  true  Democrat  who  maintains  his  own 
opinion  in  the  teeth  of  it :  this  is  democracy  double- 
dyed  indeed. 

Hard  on  the  top  of  this  theory  fell  the  strangely 
ironical  conclusion.  The  voting  began.  The  chair 
man  read  the  roll  of  delegates  by  counties,  and  the 
chief  delegate  answered  how  many  votes  the  county 
gave  for  each  candidate.  At  first  Sulzer  led — plainly 
he  was  the  choice  of  the  rural  voters.  Presently, 
"  New  York,"  called  the  chairman.  Then  uprose  the 
leader  of  Tammany — John  C.  Sheehan  is  his  eloquent 
name.  "  New  York :  John  Boyd  Thacher,  one  hun 
dred  and  five  votes."  Tammany  had  voted  solid  to  a 
man.  Sulzer  himself,  hailing  from  New  York  city, 
was  constrained  to  give  his  voice  for  his  opponent. 
With  a  hundred  and  five  votes  out  of  four  hundred  and 
forty  at  a  mouthful,  Thacher  was  as  good  as  elected. 
Then  came  a  curious  sequel  —  yet  not  so  curious, 
either,  to  those  who  have  noticed  the  ways  of  either 
beasts  or  men  in  masses.  Nearly  all  the  agricultural 
voters  now  gave  sheepish  and  rather  shamefaced  suf 
frages  to  Thacher.  The  Convention,  in  the  expressive 
native  phrase,  was  stampeded.  It  was  to  be  the  dele 
gates'  unbossed  Convention — and  Mr  John  C.  Sheehan 
controlled  it  with  his  little  finger.  The  system  of 


72  A   STATE   CONVENTION. 

voting  by  roll-call  left  no  man  any  reasonable  chance 
of  concealing  the  side  he  took ;  the  eye  of  the  boss 
was  upon  him.  So  Mr  Thacher  is  to  stand  for  gov 
ernor,  and  experts  see  in  this  the  Machiavelian  hand 
of  the  depraved  Senator  Hill  aforesaid.  Yet  it  seems 
that  Mr  Thacher  must  support  Silver,  though  per 
sonally  he  prefers  Gold.  He  must  vote  for  Silver 
because  the  majority  that  chose  him  vote  for  Silver. 
And  the  majority  chose  him  because  Mr  Sheehan 
told  it  to.  So  that  it  works  out  at  this:  that  the 
political  opinions  of  Mr  John  B.  Thacher  are  formed 
by  Mr  John  C.  Sheehan.  A  strange  paradox  for  the 
freest  democracy  on  earth  1 


IX. 


NIAGARA. 

WASHINGTON,  September  10. 

THE  dominant  and  overmastering  impression  of  Niagara 
is — water.  Water  everywhere  you  turn,  before  and 
behind,  underfoot  and  descending  in  showers  from 
overhead.  To  approach  it  is  to  be  moistened  through 
your  whole  body,  and  to  walk  round  it  is  a  liberal 
water-cure.  Here  in  Washington,  with  the  thermo 
meter  marking — I  was  going  to  say  a  cool  94°  in  the 
shade:  that  would  be  misleading — a  hot  94°  in  the 
shade,  I  sit  and  pant  for  Niagara.  It  is  a  universe 
of  water.  Miles  of  water,  fathoms  of  water,  tons  of 
water,  water  rushing  at  incalculable  speed,  water 
hurled  with  irresistible  force,  water  purling,  swish 
ing,  roaring,  water  diving  into  the  abyss,  water  leap 
ing  up  to  heaven.  Finally,  water  turning  an  electric 
wheel. 

The  great  merit  of  Niagara  as  a  cataract  is  its  acces 
sibility  from  every  distance  and  every  point  of  view. 
Knowing  itself  to  be  the  greatest  thing  on  earth,  it 


74  NIAGARA. 

has  hospitably  laid  itself  out  to  be  inspected  from 
every  part,  from  far  or  near,  to  be  seen,  heard,  and 
felt  in  its  aspects  of  beauty  as  in  its  attributes  of 
awfulness.  The  Niagara  river  runs  northward  from 
the  eastern  corner  of  Lake  Erie  to  the  western  corner 
of  Lake  Ontario.  Just  above  the  Falls  it  finds  the 
rocky  mass  of  Goat  Island  barring  its  way;  after 
this  its  bed  turns  sharply  to  the  right.  Half  of  it 
leaps  down  on  the  American  side;  the  other  half 
turns  the  corner  of  the  Island  on  the  Canadian  side, 
and  drops  in  the  vast  crescent  of  the  Horseshoe  Falls. 
The  two  are,  roughly,  at  right  angles  one  to  another. 
From  the  suspension  bridge  which  spans  the  gorge 
of  the  river  below  the  Falls,  or  from  the  Canadian 
side,  you  can  see  the  two  together:  the  American 
Falls  and  the  huge  red  -  brown  precipice  of  Goat 
Island  form  one  side  of  a  parallelogram,  the  Horse 
shoe  Falls  another.  Seen  thus,  there  is  nothing 
terrible  about  Niagara — just  white  walls  of  water 
and  white  floating  clouds  of  spray.  Over  the  lip 
of  the  Horseshoe  Falls  the  stream  curls  in  an  arc 
of  the  most  wondrous,  lustrous  green,  such  as  never 
was,  and  never  could  be,  put  on  canvas.  Down  in 
the  wide  basin  below,  the  river  seems  sluggish  and 
weary  after  its  buffeting.  Steamers  puff  along  right 
under  the  precipices  of  rock  and  water.  Every  tree 
and  blade  of  grass,  even  now,  is  green  with  the  fresh 
est,  coolest  green  of  spring.  Under  a  dying  sun  and 
a  pale  blue  sky,  with  a  fleecy  moon  riding  over  the 


THE   AMERICAN    RAPIDS.  75 

brink  of  the  Horseshoe  Falls,  Niagara  was  a  place 
to  day-dream  and  forget  there  is  any  such  thing  as 
noise  and  effort  in  the  world.  The  scene  that  could 
so  beguile  you  after  New  York  and  the  Buffalo  Con 
vention  may  call  itself  a  miracle  of  nature  with  good 
title. 

For  Niagara  in  tumult  you  must  go  to  the  American 
side.  Here  again  the  generous  cataract  offers  all 
kindness  to  its  wooers.  Above  the  Falls  the  broad 
river  is  broken  into  miles  of  leaping,  seething  rapids ; 
and  I  am  not  sure  but  this  is  the  most  romantic  part 
of  the  whole  wonder.  Everybody  knows  what  a  little 
rapid  looks  like ;  there  are  dozens  of  them  on  the 
Lynn,  for  example,  or  almost  any  stream  in  hill 
country.  This  is  a  great  waste  of  desolate  black 
tormented  water.  Here  and  there  it  flings  up  into 
white  foam  as  it  is  struck  back  from  a  rock.  Then 
it  is  pitched  forward  again,  then  aside  into  a  quiet 
eddy,  only  to  drive  forward  on  to  the  rocks  once 
more.  As  it  sweeps  down  on  the  American  Falls 
it  has  a  moment's  peace.  There  is  an  embanked 
corner  so  close  to  the  edge  that  you  may  stand,  and, 
turning  your  head  to  the  left,  see  a  limpid  stream — 
swift,  but  not  astonishingly  swift  —  flowing  by  at 
your  feet.  You  turn  to  the  right — and  there  is 
nothing  but  empty  air.  Where  has  the  river  dis 
appeared  to  ?  Then  you  look  down  and  see  it,  sunk 
underground,  as  it  were,  and  changed  from  racing 
black  to  sluggish  green.  And  the  border  between 


76  NIAGARA. 

these  two  fields  of  vision  is  just  one  long  white  line, 
where  the  water  breaks  into  foam  as  it  slides  over 
the  edge. 

All  this  only  concerns  the  look  and  the  sound  of 
the  water.  You  can  see  the  green  and  the  black 
and  the  white ;  you  can  hear  the  strong  rustle  of  the 
Eapids  and  the  roar  of  the  Falls.  But  if  you  want 
to  feel  Niagara,  then  go  down  to  the  Cave  of  the 
Winds.  The  Cave  of  the  Winds  is  not  really  a  cave 
at  all,  but  what  it  lacks  in  cave  it  makes  up  in  wind. 
It  is  really  a  path  close  under  the  base  of  the  preci 
pice  over  which  the  American  Fall  flings  itself.  As 
the  river  descends  it  is  naturally  thrown  forward  and 
outward  from  the  face  of  the  rock.  Thus  it  leaves 
a  little  passage  between  the  two  walls  of  rock  and 
water,  along  which  it  is  possible  to  walk.  You  pay 
your  dollar,  strip  off  every  rag  of  your  clothes,  lock 
up  your  watch  and  money  in  a  box,  sling  the  key 
round  your  neck,  put  on  a  suit  of  oilskin  and  list 
slippers,  and  down  you  go.  First  you  descend  a 
spiral  wooden  stair,  which  runs  down  the  face  of  the 
cliff.  Then  you  come  out  into  daylight  on  a  ridge 
under  Goat  Island.  Immediately  little  dribblets  of 
Niagara  begin  to  run  over  your  head  and  down  your 
neck.  Turn  a  sharp  corner,  and  there  is  the  Fall, 
sweeping  from  the  height  above  with  a  deafening 
roar  and  a  blinding  spume,  hardly  a  couple  of  yards 
in  front  of  you.  Just  beyond  the  spot  where  it 
alights  are  some  huge  rocks;  from  one  to  another 


THE  CAVE  OF  THE  WINDS.  77 

of  these  climbs  a  series  of  frail  wooden  bridges  and 
stairways  leading  right  across  the  face  of  the  Fall. 
That  is  the  way  to  the  Cave  of  the  Winds.  Drenched 
in  blinding  spray,  you  walk,  or  slither,  along  them. 
Of  course,  they  are  streaming  wet,  and  overgrown 
with  slimy  water-weeds.  Thus  you  pass  right  in 
front  of  the  Fall  and  look  up  at  it.  It  glides  swiftly 
and  without  effort  over  the  brink,  and  breaks  itself 
into  clouds  of  spray  as  it  beats  with  a  hoarse  grinding 
roar  on  the  rocks.  You  look  and  look.  Down,  down 
it  comes,  and  loud,  loud  it  thunders.  There  comes 
over  you  a  wild  craving  for  silence,  and  unconsciously 
you  wait  for  it  to  stop  and  give  you  time  to  pull 
yourself  together.  Only  by  degrees — so  dazed  and 
stupid  the  sublimity  of  it  leaves  you — do  you  realise 
that  Niagara  never  stops;  that  it  has  never  stopped 
one  second  since  the  water  first  burst  its  way  through 
the  rock  to  the  gorge  below,  and  that  it  will  go 
crashing  down  like  this  hour  by  hour,  year  by  year, 
century  by  century — for  ever. 

Then  you  go  down  more  slippery  steps  to  the  Cave. 
These  land  you  on  a  shelf  at  the  base  of  the  sheer 
rock — a  sort  of  twelve-inch  beach  lashed  by  a  furious 
sea  of  waterfall.  But  that  lashing  waterfall  is  the 
Cave,  and  you  have  got  to  go  through  it.  All  take 
hands;  then,  with  the  guide  leading,  you  push  into 
the  most  awful  rain-storm  that  you  ever  dreamed  of 
in  your  most  extravagant  dream.  The  only  thing 
comparable  to  it  is  being  out  of  your  depth  in  the 


78  NIAGARA. 

sea  before  you  have  learned  to  swim.  You  are  in 
the  grip  of  the  water,  and  all  of  a  sudden  you  feel 
what  a  tiny,  puny,  impotent  insect  you  are.  You 
can't  see,  you  can't  hear,  you  can't  breathe.  You 
can  just  make  shift  to  struggle  on — to  oppose  what 
silly  little  fight  you  can  against  the  unconquerable 
might  of  the  water.  Your  silly  little  effort  just  pulls 
you  through.  You  come  out  the  other  side  into  the 
sunlight  with  a  gasp,  scramble  up  a  few  steps,  and 
look  back.  Is  that  all  ?  Was  it  only  that  little  bit 
of  a  garden  watering-pot  that  you  came  through  ? 
It  looks  the  simplest  thing  in  the  world.  Only  if 
that  little  bit  knocked  the  breath  and  the  senses  and 
the  mind  out  of  you,  as  it  did,  you  can  just  begin  to 
form  some  idea  what  must  be  the  matchless  force  of 
the  whole  thing. 

Then  you  dress  and  go  back  to  your  hotel  feeling 
very  clean  and  rather  played  out,  as  if  you  had  had 
a  long  swim.  The  rest  of  your  time  you  will  do  well 
to  spend  merely  loafing  up  and  down  by  the  shore. 
The  town  of  Niagara  Falls  is  a  delight  after  cities 
like  New  York  and  Buffalo,  or  even  Boston.  One 
wide  street  with  electric  tram-cars,  and  the  rest  pave 
ments  of  plank  (to  keep  you  out  of  the  wet),  trees, 
grass,  coolness,  and  quiet.  You  may  pass  again  on 
to  the  new  suspension  bridge ;  and,  turning  there  to 
look  down  the  river,  you  will  see  factories  on  the 
brow  of  the  cliff,  and  dipping  down  to  the  green 
blotchy  eddies  the  longest  and  fattest  and  most  ver- 


THE   WATER-PIPE,   THE   WHEEL,   AND   THE   CHIMNEY.      79 

inilion  water-pipe  you  ever  saw.  Or  else  you  can 
go  and  look  at  the  huge  wheel  which  develops  electric 
power  for  millions  of  people.  Or  else  you  can  stroll 
out  to  take  a  last  look  at  the  American  Rapids  as 
they  toss  and  writhe  and  madden  under  the  moon. 
Out  of  the  light  fretwork  of  trees  that  marks  the 
Canadian  bank  the  waves  seem  to  sweep  down  on 
you  like  tortured  souls.  Turn  again,  and  up  the 
river  there  shoots,  seemingly  from  their  very  midst, 
a  tall  factory  chimney,  and  belches  into  the  still  air 
a  torrent  of  the  foulest  soot  in  the  world.  Are  we 
not  in  America? 


80 


WILLIAM    J.    BRYAN  :    DEMAGOGUE. 

WASHINGTON,  September  20. 

HITHERTO  it  has  been  the  tradition  that  the  candi 
date  for  the  Presidency  should  sit  at  home  in  dignityt 
while  others  conduct  the  campaign  on  his  behalf. 
Deputations  of  voters  may  come  to  him,  but  he 
must  not  go  to  them.  Mr  Bryan  has  changed  all 
that  —  to  the  disgust  of  his  opponents,  who  find 
his  provincial  starring  tours  unworthy  of  the  high 
office  he  sues  for;  and  to  the  equal  delight  of 
the  mass  of  his  supporters  in  the  country.  He 
moves  from  State  to  State,  addressing  a  mass  meet 
ing  here,  offering  a  few  remarks  at  a  wayside  station 
there,  with  more  than  Gladstonian  industry.  In 
the  course  of  his  pilgrimage  he  arrived  yesterday  at 
Washington. 

When  I  walked  down  to  the  station  five  minutes 
before  his  train  was  due,  I  found  it  dense  with  men 
and  women,  white,  whitey-brown,  and  black,  who  over 
flowed  into  the  streets.  In  a  torrid  wind  that  fanned 


AT   THE   STATION.  81 

them  lazily  off  the  baked  bricks  and  pavements,  they 
waited  with  a  crowd's  usual  mixture  of  expectancy 
and  listlessness.  A  large  force  of  police,  on  foot  and 
mounted,  kept  the  street  clear :  by  way  of  precaution 
they  had  brought  a  white  and  grey  van,  which  I  take 
to  be  the  American  equivalent  of  Black  Maria.  "I 
suppose  they're  going  to  take  Bryan  away  in  that," 
remarked  a  ^Republican  cynic.  The  police  of  this 
country  have  not  the  best  of  reputations  for  tact,  but 
these  Washington  men  did  their  duty  admirably. 
"  Why  don't  ye  get  on  to  the  side  walk  ? "  pleaded  a 
persuasive  mounted  Irishman.  "  Ye'll  have  to  do  ut ; 
why  don't  ye  do  ut  when  I  tell  ye  ?  Ye'll  all  see 
him."  "  See  him  for  four  years  yet,"  sang  out  a 
gentleman  with  a  twelve-inch  crimson  confession  of 
Democracy  streaming  from  his  coat.  In  the  moments 
of  waiting  there  trickled  along  a  discussion  of  the 
usual  Silver  question.  This  being  the  political  capital 
of  the  Union,  the  inhabitants  are  disfranchised,  and 
the  mass  of  them  appear  to  know  and  care  very  little 
about  the  subject.  Most  of  them  seem  to  think  that 
if  Bryan  gets  in  they  will  somehow  get  more  silver, 
and  if  M'Kinley  gets  in  they  will  somehow  get  some 
gold — and  if  all  I  hear  of  electoral  methods  is  true, 
their  expectation  is  not  wholly  unwarranted.  "  I'm 
for  gold,"  said  a  yellow  man ;  "  I  don't  want  fifty 
cents  instead  of  a  dollar."  "  Why,  we've  got  silver," 
said  a  cabman,  as  he  pulled  out  a  dime,  "  and  we've 
got  paper,"  producing  a  dollar.  "  What's  Bryan  mak- 

F 


WILLIAM   J.    BRYAN:    DEMAGOGUE. 

ing  all  the  fuss  about  ?  "  The  cogent  argument  had  a 
great  success. 

From  inside  the  station  arose  a  piercing  sound, 
something  between  a  whoop  and  a  scream.  This 
was  the  American  cheer.  Our  cheer  is  produced  by 
people  shouting  in  unison  ;  the  American  by  the  com 
bination  of  an  infinite  number  of  short,  discordant 
noises.  The  difference  is  not,  perhaps,  without  its 
analogy  to  national  character.  Ours  is  the  more 
disciplined,  and  falls  the  more  roundly  on  the  ear, 
but  to  convey  a  head-splitting  impression  of  enthusiasm 
their  method  is  the  more  direct  and  effective. 

There  was  a  trembling  in  the  crowd  by  the  door. 
An  open  carriage  with  four  horses  and  two  colossal 
negroes  in  livery  swung  up  to  the  pavement.  Next 
moment  William  J.  Bryan  was  standing  bareheaded 
inside  it.  A  compact,  black -coated  figure,  a  clean 
shaven,  clear  -  cut  face,  a  large,  sharp  nose,  and  a 
square  mouth  and  jaw.  With  the  faint  blue  stubble 
on  his  face,  and  his  long  grizzly  hair,  he  suggests  an 
actor  to  the  English  mind.  But  you  could  not  mis 
take  him  for  a  bad  actor.  Cheers  ran  out  down  the 
street,  and  hats  flew  in  the  air ;  and  so  he  drove  oft 
serene  and  upright,  pleased  but  not  surprised,  with  a 
smile  on  his  lips  and  a  light  in  his  eye — the  very  type 
of  a  great  demagogue. 

Not  necessarily  a  demagogue  in  any  reproachful 
sense.  Demagogue  means  leader  of  the  people,  and 
you  may  lead  the  people  by  straight  ways  or  crooked 


IN  THE   PARK.  83 

to  good  destinies  or  bad.  In  a  free  country  every 
politician  must  be  something  of  a  demagogue.  Disraeli 
and  Gladstone  were  both  finished  demagogues,  and 
until  we  have  two  more  great  demagogues  in  England 
politics  will  continue  to  be  as  ditch-water.  As  for 
Mr  Bryan,  not  one  questioning  word  have  I  ever 
heard  as  to  the  purity  of  his  motives.  And  in  this 
country,  where  charges  of  gross  corruption  are  volleyed 
to  and  fro  across  the  net  of  party  politics  until  you 
wonder  what  has  become  of  the  law  of  libel,  the 
absence  of  accusation  may  be  taken  as  conclusive 
proof  of  innocence.  But  demagogue — one  who  knows 
how  to  lead  the  people  and  who  enjoys  it — he  is  from 
the  crown  of  his  thinning  hair  to  the  dust  of  travel 
on  his  boots. 

I  wandered  up  to  the  park,  where  the  great  meet 
ing  was  to  be  held,  and  drifted  into  the  crowd.  The 
platform  was  built  in  front  of  a  large  stage,  whereon 
sat  perhaps  a  thousand  people.  It  was  draped  with 
bunting,  flags  flew  from  every  corner,  and  it  was 
festooned  with  hundreds  of  incandescent  lights. 
Along  to  the  speaker's  left  was  another  stand.  Afc 
one  end  of  this  a  brazen  -  lunged  band  punctuated 
the  speeches  with  "Shouting  out  the  battle-cry  of 
freedom,"  and  similar  appropriate  airs.  In  front  of 
the  platform  was  massed  the  dense  company,  about 
ten  thousand  strong :  this  was  not  an  extraordinarily 
large  meeting  for  America.  Out  of  the  sea  of  soft 
felt  hats  rose  an  occasional  club  banner,  and  parts  of 


84  WILLIAM   J.    BRYAN:    DEMAGOGUE. 

the  crowd  were  as  thick  with  American  ensigns  as  a 
wheat-field  with  poppies.  A  speaker  was  declaiming 
with  vigour  and  eloquence  from  the  platform,  but  the 
crowd  took  not  the  least  notice.  In  the  pauses  of 
their  conversation  they  occasionally  caught  a  phrase, 
and  whooped  commending! y.  But  they  were  not 
there  to  hear  arguments;  they  were  there  to  hear 
Bryan,  and  Bryan  at  the  moment  was  dining.  Now 
and  again  an  enthusiast  threw  into  the  air  a  sheaf  of 
bills,  bearing  the  opinions  of  Abraham  Lincoln  on  the 
money-power,  and  the  ominous  hot  wind,  which  was 
plainly  bringing  up  a  thunderstorm,  distributed  them 
over  the  crowd.  The  crowd  was  only  languidly  in 
terested  in  free  silver,  but  it  was  down  on  the  money- 
power.  That  is  the  kernel  of  this  election.  It  is  the 
first  stirring  of  a  huge  revolt  against  plutocracy — 
against  the  trusts  and  rings  that  take  their  toll  out" 
of  every  man's  every  dollar.  Free  silver  happens  to 
be  the  hall-mark  of  revolt,  but  free  copper  or  free 
mercury  or  free  arsenic  would  do  just  as  well 

Suddenly,  above  the  periods  of  the  orator  and  the 
whistling  of  the  wind,  the  band  crashed  out  "  See  the 
conquering  hero  comes."  Instantly  the  whole  park 
awoke.  A  forest  of  little  American  flags  sprang  up 
on  the  stand  and  waved  furiously.  A  deafening 
scream  went  up  from  the  whole  ground.  "  Unfurl," 
said  a  voice  at  my  elbow ;  I  looked  up,  and  behold 
I  was  standing  under  the  flaunting  standard  of  the 
North  Carolina  Bryan  Club.  I  felt  the  position  was 


BRYAN   SPEAKS.  85 

a  false  one — the  more  so  when  the  staff  snapped  in 
the  wind  and  the  banner  extinguished  me;  but  no 
body  had  leisure  to  think  of  such  things.  The  mass 
of  heads  and  flags  in  the  stand  was  still  heaving 
tumultuously ;  it  took  the  candidate  a  matter  of 
minutes  to  swim  through  to  the  platform,  yet  the 
piercing  quality  of  the  shrieking  never  varied.  Then 
he  appeared,  calm  but  radiant.  Ten  thousand  hats 
flew  in  the  air — ten  thousand  and  one,  counting  mine, 
which  with  the  stolidity  of  my  race  I  merely  waved 
— and  the  screams  rose  yet  more  shrilly.  A  little 
girl  in  silver  tripped  along  the  platform  rail,  and  pre 
sented  a  bunch  of  silver  roses.  The  shrieks  became 
delirium.  For  a  moment  the  square,  black  figure 
stood  absolutely  still.  Then  slowly  he  reached  forth 
the  hand,  like  St  Paul  in  the  Bible.  The  din  went 
on  unabated.  Still  very  slowly,  he  raised  an  arm  above 
his  head  and  made  passes — one,  two,  three — in  each 
direction  of  the  crowd.  Gradually  silence  crept  over 
the  mass  of  heads,  and  then  the  orator  opened  his  lips. 
In  a  voice  low  but  plain,  hoarse  but  very  rich,  he 
began.  He  was  glad  to  see  once  more  those  among 
whom  he  had  spent  four  years  of  official  life.  "  We'll 
give  you  four  years  more,"  shrieked  my  friend  from 
the  station.  A  broad  and  winning  smile  broke  over 
the  candidate's  mouth,  and  again  the  mob  screamed. 
A  most  admirable  demagogue  !  "  That's  smart,"  said 
a  little  man  behind  me ;  "  did  ye  see  how  it  made  him 
laugh?"  Everybody  saw;  everybody  was  meant  to 


86  WILLIAM   J.    BRYAN  :    DEMAGOGUE. 

see.  Then  again,  when  rain  began  to  fall,  somebody 
held  up  an  umbrella  over  the  orator's  head.  The 
wind  blew  it  inside  out.  But  the  orator  crammed  a 
broad  felt  hat  on  to  his  head,  turned  up  his  coat  collar 
with  a  sturdy  gesture,  and  then  spread  out  his  arms  to 
his  hearers.  Once  more  they  cracked  their  throats 
with  applause.  "  They  won't  get  him  down  from 
there  so  easy,"  cried  a  delighted  elector.  Nature 
herself,  turned  gold-bug,  was  powerless  to  deter  the 
people's  hero  from  his  mission. 

As  for  the  matter  of  the  speech,  why  trouble  to 
inquire  about  it?  It  reads  well  in  this  morning's 
newspaper,  but  I  thought  it  smacked  of  platitude  and 
tautology.  Certainly  it  was  most  effectively  delivered, 
and  telling  gestures  drove  every  point  hard  home. 
But  the  matter — 'twas  no  matter  what  he  said.  They 
had  come  to  see  and  hear,  but  not  to  reason.  Each 
man  was  more  concerned  to  set  his  own  little  radius 
laughing  with  a  smart  bit  of  comment  than  to  hear 
what  the  man  they  cheered  had  to  say.  "  Did  ye  see 
him  ?  "  was  the  question  one  put  to  another — not 
"  What  did  he  say  ? "  Both  for  good  and  evil,  the  free 
American  citizen  is  no  disciple  of  anybody ;  it  would 
take  a  smart  man  to  teach  him.  So  the  whole  meeting 
was  just  a  spectacular  effect.  And  nobody  knew  and 
acted  on  that  truth  better  than  William  J.  Bryan. 

Then  came  the  storm.  First  a  clap  of  thunder,  then 
a  cloud  of  dust,  then  flag-staves  cracking,  and  finally 
such  a  fusilade  pj:  heavy  raindrops  as  England  never 


THE   DEMAGOGUE   AT   WORK.  87 

sees.  Three-quarters  of  the  audience  took  to  their 
heels  like  a  routed  army.  The  rest  squatted  down 
close  to  the  ground  in  bunches  of  two  or  three  under 
an  umbrella,  till  the  park  might  have  been  dotted  with 
toads  under  toadstools.  Minute  by  minute  the  pitiless 
downpour  went  on.  Then  the  remaining  quarter  split 
asunder  from  the  centre.  "  He's  gone  !  "  and  in  fifteen 
seconds  the  park  was  as  bare  as  if  Bryan  never  had 
been.  But  as  I  splashed  home  I  saw  the  four-horsed 
carriage,  with  the  nodding  helmets  of  mounted  police, 
driving  rapidly  off,  with  a  further  running,  yelling 
escort  of  devotees.  And  I  saw  the  black,  square 
figure  turn  from  side  to  side,  buoyant  and  elastic, 
glad  and  exultant  over  the  popular  applause.  A  bora 
demagogue,  if  I  ever  saw  one ! 


XL 


THE  CAPITAL  AND  THE  CAPITOL. 

WASHINGTON,  September  21, 

THE  United  States  are  trying  the  biggest  experiment 
in  Government  that  the  world  has  ever  seen  or  is 
ever  likely  to  see.  It  has  been  going  on  now  for 
well  over  a  hundred  years,  and  I  do  not  suppose  it 
will  be  completed  for  at  least  a  hundred  years  more. 
The  experiment  is  to  find  out  whether  a  tract  of 
populated  country  so  vast  that  it  takes  five  days' 
incessant  travel  to  go  from  one  end  of  it  to  another 
can  be  made  into  a  nation ;  and  if  so,  under  what 
form  of  government  ?  People  in  Europe,  and  for 
that  matter  in  America  too,  are  apt  to  conclude  that 
the  experiment  is  complete  and  has  succeeded.  I 
do  not  think  so.  It  has,  indeed,  been  astonishingly 
successful,  but  it  is  not  yet  more  than  half  complete. 
West  of  the  Mississippi  and  the  Missouri,  the  country 
is  pegged  out,  and  to  some  extent  peopled ;  but  in 
the  next  hundred  years  the  mere  natural  increase 
of  population,  to  say  nothing  of  immigration,  will 


EAST  AND   WEST.  89 

probably  throw  the  centre  of  gravity  nearer  Chicago 
than  New  York.  At  present  the  West  is  dependent 
both  politically  and  economically  upon  the  East ;  when 
it  becomes  self-sufficing  the  situation  will  be  very 
different. 

The  present  election  has,  of  course,  a  most  impor 
tant  bearing  on  the  ultimate  outcome  of  the  experi 
ment.  For  the  first  time  the  East  and  West  find, 
or  believe  they  find,  their  interests  sharply  and  dia 
metrically  opposed.  And  I  own  it  does  not  appear 
to  me  the  best  of  augury  for  the  ultimate  unity  of 
this  country  that  each  side  appears  more  set  on 
beating  down  the  opponent  than  on  trying  to  con 
ciliate  his  interests  with  its  own.  I  have  not  noticed, 
for  instance,  that  the  Eepublicans  have  put  out  dny 
alternative  policy  to  relieve  Western  agriculture,  nor 
that  the  Democrats  have  devised  any  expedient  in 
the  event  of  their  success  to  break  the  fall  of  Eastern 
business.  That  any  serious  danger  of  disruption  is 
involved  in  the  success  of  either  party  I  have  met 
nobody  who  will  admit.  "We  are  a  sentimental 
people,"  said  the  most  statesmanlike  of  New  York 
editors  to  me,  "  and  we  are  an  excitable  people,  but 
we  have  our  share  of  common-sense.  With  the  line 
of  cleavage  drawn  so  deep  and  so  long  before  the 
election  day,  I  do  not  think  we  shall  lose  our  heads 
whatever  happens."  On  the  other  side  I  put  the 
less  responsible  opinion  of  a  manufacturer  of  fur 
niture — and  an  exporter  of  it  to  Glasgow,  too,  if  it 


90  THE   CAPITAL   AND   THE   CAPITOL. 

comes  to  that — whom  I  met  in  the  train  near  Buffalo. 
He  was  an  American  such  as  I  have  long  dreamed 
of — nearer  6  feet  6  inches  than  6  feet,  wiry,  parch 
ment-skinned,  clean  shaven  but  for  the  grizzled  chin- 
beard,  with  long  yellow  teeth,  and  a  humorous  blue 
eye.  "  I  tell  you,  sir,"  he  said,  "  when  once  the  people 
begin  fixing  the  coinage  for  themselves  they  will  never 
let  go  of  it  again.  If  Bryan  wins,  the  bankers  will 
call  every  loan,  and  every  mortgage  will  be  called 
as  it  falls  due.  Business  will  go  to  hell,  sir,  and  there 
will  be  trouble."  Trouble  or  not,  I  do  not  admire 
the  way  the  two  sides  guard  themselves  from  trying 
to  understand  the  position  of  the  other. 

But  what  have  these  generalities  to  do  with  Wash 
ington  ?  Not  much,  I  admit.  Yet  it  is  because  of 
the  peculiar  nature  of  the  experiment  in  Government 
of  which  I  speak  that  Washington  exists  at  all.  It 
is  fairly  plain  that  this  huge  country  cannot  be  cen 
tralised  in  a  capital  as  England  or  France  are  central 
ised.  You  want  a  vast  deal  of  local  self-government 
to  keep  Maine  and  South  Carolina  and  Oregon  in 
the  same  nation.  Accordingly  there  is  a  deal,  and 
a  vast  deal,  of  local  patriotism  for  the  local  Govern 
ment  to  brace  itself  against.  One  of  its  results — 
I  should  say  a  deplorable  one — is  that  a  man  may 
only  sit  in  Congress  for  the  constituency  in  which 
he  actually  lives.  The  ablest  statesman  in  the  world, 
if  he  is  defeated  in  his  own  home,  is  temporarily  lost 
to  his  country.  No  doubt  the  carpet-bagger  has  his 


AN   ARTIFICIAL   CAPITAL.  91 

demerits,  but  so  surely  has  this  opposite  system. 
It  stifles  good  men,  and  does  nothing  to  discourage 
sectional  exclusiveness.  It  is  another  result  of  this 
local  sentiment,  not  to  say  mutual  local  antagonism, 
that  the  federal  capital  could  be  fixed  in  no  existing 
important  city.  Philadelphia  would  not  endure  New 
York,  and  New  York  would  never  send  her  repre 
sentatives  to  Philadelphia;  New  Jersey  would  have 
nothing  to  do  with  either,  and  the  South  snapped  its 
fingers  at  all  three.  So  the  district  of  Columbia  was 
carved  out  of  Maryland  to  the  extent  of  ten  square 
miles,  the  capital  was  laid  out  by  a  French  engineer, 
the  Capitol  was  planned  by  a  West  Indian  architect, 
and  the  city  of  Washington  arose.  Its  inhabitants 
were  and  remain  disfranchised ;  why,  I  cannot  alto 
gether  see.  It  can  hardly  be  because  they  supply  dry 
goods  and  groceries  to  representatives  and  senators, 
and  might  thereby  be  corrupted.  If  that  is  the  reason, 
why  not  disfranchise  all  senators'  grocers  as  such  ? 
Senators  have  grocers  at  home  as  well  as  at  Washing 
ton  :  here,  moreover,  one  senator's  grocery  bill  might 
reasonably  be  expected  to  balance  and  neutralise 
another's. 

There  is  one  very  obvious  inconvenience  in  having 
several  capitals  to  a  country.  Here  is  New  York,  the 
business  capital ;  Washington,  the  political  capital ;  and 
Boston,  the  intellectual  capital — this  is  denied,  by  the 
way,  outside  of  Boston — and  so  on.  Now  if  you  want 
to  find  a  man  of  any  mark  in  England  or  France,  you 


92        THE  CAPITAL  AND  THE  CAPITOL. 

go  to  London  or  Paris,  and  in  a  short  while  he  is  certain 
to  come  under  your  hand.  Not  so  here.  You  want  a 
man  in  New  York :  lie  is  occupied  with  his  political 
duties  in  Washington.  You  want  him  in  Washington: 
he  has  gone  to  New  York  to  look  after  his  business. 
Why  the  deuce  can't  he  do  the  two  things  in  the  same 
place  ?  you  ask  yourself  at  last. 

But  when  you  reach  Washington  you  forget  every 
thing  in  delight  at  the  charm  of  the  place.  There  is 
an  impression  of  comfort,  of  leisure,  of  space  to  spare, 
of  stateliness  that  you  hardly  expected  in  America. 
It  looks  a  sort  of  place  where  nobody  has  to  work  for 
his  living,  or,  at  any  rate,  not  hard.  If  Washington 
were  in  Germany,  instead  of  a  fair-sized  slice  of  Ger 
many  being  in  Washington,  it  would  be  called  a  "  Resi- 
denz  Stadt."  That  is  just  what  it  is — a  seat  of  Govern 
ment,  laid  out  for  the  ease  and  dignity  of  the  governors. 
Its  plan  reflects  the  greatest  credit  on  its  French  en 
gineer,  who  plainly  had  not  forgotten  Versailles  in  the 
land  of  the  stranger.  In  theory  the  Capitol  is  the  centre 
of  the  city.  From  it  radiate  four  streets — in  plain  fact 
there  are  only  three,  but  though  the  fourth  does  not 
meet  the  eye,  it  exists  for  topographic  purposes  just  as 
truly  as  does  the  Equator — which  divide  the  city  into 
four  quarters,  north-east,  north-west,  south-east,  south 
west.  Within  these  divisions  the  streets  are  ticketed 
off  on  the  American  method,  those  running  East  and 
West  being  lettered  A  Street,  B  Street,  and  so  on, 


DIGNIFIED    WASHINGTON.  93 

while  those  running  North  and  South  are  numbered — 
1st  Street,  2d  Street,  3d  Street. 

But  this  method,  though  full  of  convenience,  is  apt 
to  leave  a  city  with  very  little  more  character  and 
beauty  than  the  gridiron  which  it  resembles.  Accord 
ingly,  the  ingenious  designer  has  intersected  this 
arrangement  with  broad  avenues,  running  at  various 
angles  to  the  squares.  Cunningly  taking  advantage 
of  slight  inequalities  of  the  ground,  this  expedient  has 
produced  some  of  the  finest  streets  and  widest  pros 
pects  in  the  world.  Washington,  moreover,  is  the  best 
planted  city  I  have  ever  rested  my  eyes  on.  Looking 
out  from  the  summit  of  the  Capitol,  you  realise  the 
extraordinary  liberality  with  which  the  city  has  been 
planned.  Almost  every  street  in  the  network  has  its 
double  row  of  fine  trees.  In  all  other  cities  seen  from 
above  the  note  of  colour  is  struck  by  the  roofs;  in 
Washington  slate  roofs  and  red  bricks  are  alike 
swallowed  up  in  green. 

Another  sight  of  great  refreshment,  to  the  foreign 
eye  is  furnished  by  the  public  buildings.  Dating  for 
the  most  part  from  the  end  of  last  century  or  the 
early  part  of  this,  they  are  built  in  a  chaste  and  classic 
style  instinct  with  dignity  and  refinement.  For  in 
terest  and  effect,  I  confess,  I  would  ten  times  sooner 
look  at  the  vigorous  uncouthness  of  New  York.  Yet 
after  this  Washington  affords  a  comfortable  recoil. 
The  White  House,  with  its  Corinthian  pillars,  its  even 


94        THE  CAPITAL  AND  THE  CAPITOL. 

rows  of  large  windows,  its  flat  balustraded  roof,  might 
almost  be  a  great  English  mansion  of  the  last  century. 
The  Treasury  and  the  Post  Office  have  the  same  Ionic 
columns;  and  the  Patent  Office  is  much  like  the 
British  Museum,  only  clean. 

But  the  star  of  Washington  is  the  Capitol.  It  may 
be  roughly  described  as  like  the  National  Gallery 
flanked  with  a  Koyal  Exchange  on  each  side,  and  with 
the  dome  of  St  Paul's  stuck  on  top.  This  is  only  a 
very  rough  working  description,  and  is  far  from  doing 
the  Capitol  justice.  It  stands  on  a  low  hill  which  you 
ascend  by  broad  flights  of  stone  steps.  Then  it  is 
girdled  with  tier  on  tier  of  stone  terraces,  and  this 
setting  keeps  its  great  length  and  height  from  breaking 
out  of  proportion.  Though  it  has  been  built  wing  by 
wing,  extension  by  extension  for  over  a  hundred  years, 
the  parts  all  combine  into  one  harmony.  None  crushes 
out  the  other,  and  by  reason  of  the  harmony  the  huge 
mass  is  as  light  and  graceful  as  any  toy  temple  in  a 
pleasure-ground.  Yet  with  all  its  gracefulness,  the 
Capitol  is  very  majestic.  It  would  be  a  king  of  build 
ings  in  any  city  ;  it  is  doubly  regal  in  Washington. 
For  plainly  the  capital  is  built  for  the  Capitol ;  not  the 
Capitol  for  the  capital.  It  is  the  Capitol's  own  city, 
laid  out  at  its  feet  to  do  it  honour  and  to  enhance  its 
lordliness.  Broad  sweeps  of  public  garden,  long  vistas 
of  spacious  avenue,  white  outlines  of  vassal  public 
offices  grouped  round  it — the  whole  city  is  the  setting 


THE   SEAL   OF    UNITY.  95 

for  this  shining  jewel.  Each  city  of  America  is 
stamped  with  its  own  individuality ;  the  Capitol  is  the 
seal  of  the  unity  of  them  all. 

Will  the  seal  be  strong  enough  to  bind  them  ?  Will 
this  still  stand  as  the  one  Capitol,  without  rival  or 
second,  in  the  year  2000?  Who  knows? 


96 


XIL 

IN   THE   SOUTH. 

WELMIKOTOH,  N.  C. ,  September  24. 

YES;  beyond  question  I  was  in  the  South.  That 
truth  was  established  by  ten  able-bodied  niggers 
struggling  for  a  single  hand-bag.  As  I  sauntered 
down  the  main  street  of  Wilmington  the  fact  was 
gradually  stamped  upon  my  brain  beyond  possibility 
of  mistake.  They  had  told  me  that  Wilmington  was 
not  real  South :  for  that  you  must  go  down  to  New 
Orleans  or  Texas.  No  doubt  New  Orleans  is  of  a 
richer  southern  dye  than  Wilmington.  But  to  go  to 
New  Orleans  and  back  from  Washington  is  a  matter 
of  days,  whereas  Wilmington  is  but  a  paltry  twelve 
hours  away,  which  means  almost  next  door  in  America. 
And  Wilmington,  after  all,  is  in  North  Carolina,  an 
indisputably  Southern  State.  Here  is  a  river  of  thick 
yellow  ochre,  dawdling  between  low,  swampy,  tree- 
grown  banks,  where  they  were  shipping  cotton.  Here 
is  a  population  wherein  the  blacks  outnumber  the 
whites.  Was  not  Wilmington  a  notable  resort  of  the 


THE   UNTIDY   SOUTH.  97 

blockade  runners  ?    Cotton,  niggers,  and  blockade  run 
ners — what  more  Southern  can  you  want  than  that  ? 

Here,  moreover,  was  the  true  Southern  atmosphere 
—the  sun  and  dirt,  and  the  imperative  necessity  to 
saunter,  which  you  cannot  but  feel  and  yield  to, 
whether  you  come  on  it  down  the  Rhone  or  over 
the  Alps,  across  the  Danube  or  by  the  Atlantic  Coast 
liailroad  from  Washington.  Once  you  have  known  it 
you  cannot  miss  it  again.  There  had  been  a  smart 
frost  in  the  morning,  yet  the  sun  and  air  of  Wilming 
ton  exhaled  a  languor  which  had  been  wanting  in  the 
greater  heat  of  New  York.  Here  were  barefooted 
children,  white,  and  black,  and  brown.  All  the  shops 
had  awnings,  with  the  greater  part  of  the  stock  hang 
ing  from  pegs  and  rails  outside ;  all  the  shopkeepers 
were  lounging  out  on  the  pavement.  Along  the  prin 
cipal  street  stout  brick  buildings  elbowed  little  one- 
storeyed  wooden  shanties,  slowly  dropping  to  pieces. 
Most  of  the  houses  were  of  wood  —  the  better  sort 
painted,  the  worse  going  to  be  painted  some  day,  if 
there  was  any  of  them  still  left,  when  somebody  felt 
equal  to  it.  Even  the  finest  houses,  with  green  blinds 
rigidly  shut  on  the  sun,  with  shady  trees,  palnis,  and 
olives  planted  about  them,  with  cool  rocking-chairs  in 
the  freshness  of  the  verandahs  —  even  these  would 
betray  their  Southern  nature  by  a  ragged  fence  of 
un painted  rails,  reeling  and  staggering  in  the  lightest 
breeze,  because  somebody  was  still  thinking  about 
knocking  in  a  nail.  The  streets  of  square  granite 

Q 


98  IN   THE   SOUTH. 

blocks  and  the  pavements  of  red  bricks  had  none  of 
the  trim  evenness  of  Portland  or  the  better  parts  of 
Boston.  They  had  begun  to  rise  into  hills  at  Rich- 
mond;  in  Wilmington  they  were  alpine.  Most  of 
the  streets  were  not  even  paved,  but  were  barely 
fordable  drifts  of  black  sandy  loam.  The  very  electric 
cars — for  not  even  the  southernmost  of  American 
cities  can  forego  its  electric  cars — were  empty  and 
unpainted,  and  they  seesawed  along  their  undulating 
rails  without  spirit,  as  if  the  electricity  had  gone  stale. 
Mules  stumbled  along,  jerking  rattling  vans  behind 
them.  Here  came  a  creaking  bullock  -  cart,  with  a 
blue -Moused  nigger  swinging  on  a  broken  water- 
barrel  inside  it.  And  in  the  very  midmost  pavement 
of  the  market-place  sat  three  hens,  and  the  citizens 
strolled  round  to  avoid  starting  them.  Oh  yes,  this 
was  unquestionably  the  South. 

Now  I  understand  why  my  Northern  friends  had 
all  warned  me  against  the  South.  "  There's  nothing 
worth  seeing,"  expostulated  one  and  all. 

"  Well,  there's  the  South,"  I  urged.  "  A  beastly 
country."  "  We've  always  had  a  kind  of  tenderness 
for  it,"  I  pleaded.  "  I  know  you  have,  but  heaven 
knows  what  you  ever  saw  attractive  in  it."  To  the 
hurrying,  pushing  Northern  man,  who  is  proud  to 
profess  and  call  himself  a  hustler,  I  believe  there 
is  something  almost  humiliating  in  the  fact  that  he 
is  of  the  same  nation  as  basking,  dawdling,  untidy 
Wilmington.  In  Richmond  there  was  nothing  to  be 


RESPECTABLE  RICHMOND.  99 

ashamed  of ;  for  Richmond,  since  the  war  left  her 
a  depopulated  ruin  sown  with  ashes,  has  advanced 
to  be  a  flourishing  manufacturing  and  trading  town. 
Richmond,  moreover,  though  I  should  not  call  it  in 
any  sense  a  fine  place,  is  decently  clean,  and  wears  a 
look  of  industry  and  thrift.  It  is  not  finished  yet,  of 
course — nothing  is  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  except 
poor  Wilmington.  But  Richmond  looks  prosperous 
and  has  public  monuments,  and  at  least  has  the 
interest  of  her  battlefields,  which  are  a  perfectly 
respectable  thing  for  any  city  to  show.  But  Wil 
mington  !  What  could  be  taking  any  sane  man  to 
Wilmington  ? 

Yet  even  Wilmington  is  not  without  her  modest 
industrial  achievements.  You  approach  her  through 
miles  and  miles  of  straggling  pine  wood,  and  though 
the  trade  in  resin  and  turpentine  is  largely  worked 
out,  and  has  gone  further  south,  there  is  still  a  bit  of  a 
lumber  export.  Moreover,  in  Wilmington  the  British 
vice-consul,  son  of  a  Scotch  West  Indian,  has  built 
up  the  largest  cotton  export  business  in  the  whole 
of  America.  Three  Liverpool-bound  steamers  lay  at 
his  wharves,  and  hour  by  hour  the  bales  of  cotton 
were  swung  aboard.  In  the  warehouse,  hour  by  hour, 
the  huge  cotton -press  sent  up  a  blast  of  screaming 
steam  as  it  dealt  with  a  fresh  bale.  Before  they  go 
under  the  press  they  are  fat  cushions  of  the  fluffy 
white  stuff,  as  big  as  two  of  the  biggest  travelling- 
trunks  you  can  conceive.  A  couple  of  panting  niggers 


OF  THF 

f    UNIVERSITY  ) 

or 

04 r  ir* 


or        J 


100  IN   THE   SOUTH. 

drag  up  the  bundle  and  put  it  under  the  press.  Great 
iron  jaws  grip  it  above  and  below,  and  look  as  if  they 
must  meet  in  it.  Then  the  steam  hisses  out  overhead, 
the  jaws  relax,  and  toss  out  a  neat  brick  of  compressed 
cotton  no  more  than  six  inches  thick,  metal -bound 
and  ready  for  shipping  in  five  minutes.  After  all, 
why  should  Wilmington  blush  ?  There  is  not  the 
equal  of  this  machine  between  the  Chesapeake  and 
Mexico. 

Indeed,  the  whole  South — so  the  machine's  master 
told  me — is  looking  up  commercially.  Atlanta  and 
Savannah  are  its  show-places,  but  the  advance  runs 
almost  along  the  whole  line.  The  very  farmers,  he 
thought,  are  better  off  than  they  were  three  years  ago. 
Then  they  staked  their  all  on  cotton,  and  imported 
the  bacon  they  ate  and  the  very  hay  for  their  horses 
from  the  West.  Now  they  grow  enough  for  them 
selves,  so  that  they  stand  to  lose  less  on  a  bad  or  an 
excessive  cotton  crop — either  of  which  is  apt  to  spell 
ruin. 

And  then  the  nigger.  To  the  stranger  of  a  day 
there  is  much  entertainment  in  the  nigger.  But  the 
born  Southerner,  or  the  Southerner  by  adoption,  or 
even  the  Northerner  who  knows  the  South,  sees  no 
comedy  in  him.  As  I  came  South  last  night  from 
Eichmond  I  conversed  with  two  Northern  men.  One 
was  a  drummer — which  is  American  for  a  bagman — 
from  New  York;  the  other  a  Canadian,  from  far  North 
of  the  Great  Lakes  —  a  stout  -  built,  square  -  headed 


THE   NIGGER.  101 

young  man,  shcrt  of  a  thumb  on  the  right  hand,  who 
had  sturdily  exchanged  40°  below  zero  for  100°  in  the 
shade,  and  manages  a  big  lumber  business  in  South 
Carolina.  "I  was  in  a  hotel  up  North,"  said  the 
traveller — it  is  hopeless  to  follow  his  rich  profanity 
with  any  mere  blanks — "  and  I  went  into  the  dining- 
room,  and  there  was  a  nigger  head-waiter,  sir.  Yes, 
sir — a  nigger  ordering  white  girls  about;  I  tell  you 
that  made  me  tired.  Then  this  nigger  head-waiter 
came,  and  showed  me  to  a  table  with  three  niggers ! 
When  I  was  paying  my  bill  to  go  to  another  hotel, 
the  clerk  said,  *  Why  do  you  object  to  sit  with  the 
coloured  gentlemen  ? '  'I  didn't  see  any  gentlemen/ 
says  I ;  '  I  saw  three  buck  niggers,  if  that's  what  you 
mean.'  'Ah,'  he  says,  'that  race  problem  will  never 
be  solved.'  '  Yes,'  I  says ;  '  but  it  is  solved  in  the 
South.  It  adjusts  itself.  Treat  them  as  servants — 
that's  all  they're  fit  for — and  if  one  gets  fresh,  shoot 
him.'"  "Quite  right,"  said  the  Canadian. 

This  Canadian's  views  of  the  nigger  had  been  arrived 
at  after  a  perfectly  unprejudiced  study  of  him.  "You 
know,"  he  said  to  me,  "  they  make  a  man  lazy.  If  I 
go  to  Canada  and  get  out  at  the  station  with  two 
grips,  everybody's  got  his  own  work  to  do,  and  I  must 
carry  them  for  myself.  Down  here  there's  half-a- 
dozen  niggers  wmld  carry  them  miles  for  a  nickel. 
Now,  in  Canada,  you  see  the  farmer  ploughing  his 
land,  and  all  his  sons,  down  to  a  little  kid  of  twelve, 
working  with  him.  In  Texas  you  see  the  planter 


102  IN    THE    SOUTH. 

sitting  with  his  feet  up  on  the  verandah  all  day, 
reading  some  fool  newspaper  with  no  profit  in  it. 
Then  he  lets  off  twenty-five  acres  here  to  John  John 
son,  and  twenty  -  five  there  to  Tom  Thomson,  and 
another  twenty -five  to  Bill  Bilson.  Then  he  turns 
his  back,  and  the  nigger  don't  fertilise  the  land.  He 
works  one  day,  and  the  next  he  goes  off  to  the  next 
town  to  see  a  man  because  he  didn't  see  him  the  day 
before.  He's  just  like  a  monkey,  the  nigger.  He's 
always  idling  about  to  see  something  new,  or  trying  to 
learn  some  fool  trick  that  nobody  else  can  do,  and 
that'll  never  be  any  good  to  him.  He'd  sooner  go  on 
a  bicycle  than  in  a  train,  and  he'd  sooner  have  a  gun 
than  money." 

It  is  quite  true  ;  niggers  are  like  monkeys.  I  have 
been  watching  them  all  day.  It  is  not  only  their 
backward  sloping  foreheads,  and  huge  projecting  lips. 
They  squat  about  the  street  and  jabber  like  monkeys ; 
they  are  always  pinching  each  other  or  trying  little 
tricks,  such  as  throwing  up  a  nut  and  catching  it  in 
the  mouth.  A  black  cannot  even  walk  down  the 
street  without  touching  everything  laid  out  before 
every  shop  he  passes.  I  must  own  that  it  seems  to 
me  awful  that  these  people  should  have  votes,  and 
in  a  town  like  Wilmington  should  actually  have  a 
majority  of  votes.  "  They  were  made  by  the  same 
Creator  as  made  you,"  said  a  Northerner  to  me.  Pos 
sibly  ;  but  they  were  certainly  not  made  in  the  same 
way.  "  And  how  would  you  like  it,"  broke  in  a  white- 


AGAINST   NATURE.  103 

haired  Southerner,  "  if  in  Boston  a  crowd  of  people  of 
no  property,  of  no  education,  wanting,  by  reason  of  the 
history  of  their  race,  in  truth  and  honour,  sobriety  and 
chastity,  were  in  a  position  to  tax  your  property,  to 
waste  your  money,  and  to  bring  your  Government  to 
ruin  ? "  "  Why,  by  the  Lord  ! "  cried  the  Bostonian, 
"  that's  just  what  we  have  got  in  Boston — the  Irish." 
"  Try  the  nigger  a  few  years,  and  you'll  pray  to  have 
the  Irish  back  again,"  was  the  reply. 

It  is  not  quite  so  bad  as  that  now.  It  was,  though, 
just  after  the  war,  when  a  gang  of  Kepublican  carpet 
baggers  came  down  from  the  North  and  formed  the 
new  black  voters  into  an  organisation  for  legalised 
political  plunder.  Not  that  the  nigger  now  gives  any 
trouble.  In  Wilmington,  as  a  gentleman  told  me  who 
employs  hundreds  of  them,  the  blacks  are  very  tract 
able.  "  The  only  jealousy  comes  from  a  class  of  white 
man  so  low  as  to  compete  industrially  with  them." 
He  had  had  the  same  black  family  servants  over  forty 
years — since  the  days  before  the  war.  But  even  this 
friend  of  the  negro  was  shocked  at  the  idea  of  their 
mingling  with  the  white  race.  "  It  produces  a  good- 
for-nothing  mongrel,  and  demoralises  the  whole  popu 
lation.  You  can  see  plainly  that  it  is  not  the  will  of 
Providence,"  he  went  on,  in  all  pious  sincerity,  "  that 
the  races  should  mix.  If  they  intermarry,  after  four 
or  five  mulatto  children,  there  will  come  one  quite 
black — a  completely  African  type.  No ;  it  is  against 
the  laws  of  Nature  and  of  Heaven," 


104  IN   THE   SOUTH. 

So  there  the  Southern  nigger  lives — alongside  of  the 
white  man,  yet  as  far  away  from  him  as  if  he  had 
never  left  the  home  of  his  grandfathers.  He  neither 
marries  among  them  nor  gives  to  them  in  marriage. 
A  "  c  " — "  coloured  " — stands  against  his  name  in  the 
directory.  He  has  his  own  stores,  for  he  would  not 
be  suffered  inside  those  of  the  white.  He  may  not 
stay  in  the  same  hotel,  nor  travel  in  the  same  railway- 
carriage,  nor  even  worship  beside  the  white  ;  there  are 
separate  coloured  churches  for  coloured  Christians. 
And  he  is  quite  happy  and  lazy,  jolly  and  improvident. 
His  eyes  and  his  lips  gleam  with  white  eyeball  and 
tooth  when  you  look  at  him;  he  salaams  when  you 
speak  to  him,  and  fans  you  as  you  sit  at  table.  He 
can  supply  all  the  wants  that  he  is  capable  of  feeling ; 
he  is  satisfied  with  his  proper  position  of  inferiority. 
The  problem  adjusts  itself. 


106 


XIII. 

SOUTHERN   POLITICS. 

PHILADELPHIA,  September  26. 

*  THIS  is  the  keenest  election  I  ever  was  in,  and  the 
queerest."  So  spoke  Senator  Faulkner,  chairman  of 
the  Democratic  Congressional  Committee  at  Washing 
ton.  The  room  was  papered  with  portraits  of  William 
J.  Bryan,  of  various  approximations  to  a  likeness,  and 
carpeted  with  newspapers,  maps,  tracts  on  silver,  and 
all  the  other  litter  of  an  election  headquarters.  "How 
the  queerest  ? "  I  asked.  "  Why,  usually  you  can  tell 
by  the  middle  of  October  or  before  just  about  what 
vote  can  be  gotten  out  on  each  side.  This  time  there 
will  be " — he  paused  a  second  with  a  wry  face — 
"  some  rich  Democrats  who  will  go  for  M'Kinley  or 
that  little  Indianapolis  ticket.  On  the  other  hand,  we 
shall  get  a  lot  of  factory  operatives  that  they  count  on. 
They  wear  a  M'Kinley  button,  and  you  hear  that  only 
eight  men  in  this  factory  or  twelve  in  that  are  for 
Bryan.  Wait  till  they  get  hold  of  the  ballot  paper. 
For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  this  country  every 


106  SOUTHERN   POLITICS. 

big  labour  organisation  is  solid  on  the  same  side — 
on  our  side.  For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  this 
country,  sir." 

"  It  must  need  a  deal  of  organisation."  "  You  may 
say  so.  We  have  an  organisation — and  so  has  the 
other  side — that  covers  the  whole  country,  and  goes 
right  up  to  headquarters.  The  smallest  division  is 
the  precinct.  The  precinct  reports  to  the  county 
organisation,  that  to  the  Congressional  district,  that  to 
the  State,  and  that  to  the  National  organisation.  In  a 
precinct  there  will  be  only  from  fifty  to  a  hundred  and 
fifty  voters,  so  they  can't  miss  getting  on  to  what  vote 
each  man's  going  to  give.  Then  we  know  where  we're 
weak  and  where  we're  strong.  We  neglect  those 
States,  and  put  all  our  literature  and  speakers  into 
the  doubtful  ones.  Do  you  see  ? " 

"  I  see.  And  what  are  the  safe  States  and  what  are 
the  doubtful  ones  ? "  "  Well,  we've  almost  given  up 
the  North."  I  may  mention  here  that  the  unstable 
John  Boyd  Thacher,  whose  nomination  at  Buffalo 
under  the  influence  of  Tammany  Hall  I  described  a 
week  ago,  has  behaved  exactly  as  I  said  he  would. 
He  has  issued  a  manifesto  explaining  quite  shame 
lessly  that  he  is  going  to  vote  for  the  silver  candidate, 
but  that  personally  he  is  in  favour  of  gold.  There 
upon  public  pressure  has  forced  him  to  retire.  Of 
course  this  has  badly  demoralised  the  Democrats  in 
New  York,  and  confusion  has  radiated  thence  all  over 
the  East  "  In  the  South,"  resumed  Senator  Faulkner, 


HOW   TO    ELECT   A   PRESIDENT.  107 

"there  are  159  electoral  votes.  We  reckon  to  get 
all  those,  with  the  possible  exception  of  two  States. 
In  the  West,  again,  there  are  sixty-one  votes,  and  we 
make  sure  of  all  those,  with  again  the  possible  excep 
tion  of  two  small  States.  That  makes  220  voices  in 
the  Electoral  College,  and  224  gives  a  majority  for  Mr 
Bryan.  So  even  if  we  lose  the  four  States  I  spoke 
of  and  gain  any  two  of  these  central  States — Ohio, 
Indiana,  Illinois,  Iowa,  Wisconsin,  Minnesota,  and 
Michigan — then  Mr  Bryan  will  be  elected." 

I  ought  to  say,  for  those  who  have  not  threaded  the 
mazes  of  the  United  States  constitution,  that  the 
American  people  do  not  vote  for  their  President 
directly.  Each  State  chooses,  on  the  basis  of  its 
population,  so  many  voters,  in  the  Electoral  College  of 
447,  which  then  proceeds  to  make  the  election.  This 
hardly  seems  an  ideal  democratic  method,  and  many 
people  condemn  it.  The  man  who  gets  a  majority  of 
the  electors  has  not  necessarily  a  majority  on  the 
popular  vote.  A  bare  majority  in  a  big  State  choosing 
twenty  or  thirty  electors  may  easily  weigh  down  a 
wellnigh  unanimous  vote  in  half-a-dozen  small  ones. 
In  1884  a  majority  of  1150  in  New  York,  which  re 
turns  thirty-six  electors,  turned  the  whole  election. 

Senator  Faulkner's  reckoning  of  the  chances  repre 
sents  the  general  official  and  unofficial  opinion  of  his 
side.  They  all  refuse  to  hear  a  doubt  about  anything 
West  of  the  Missouri,  or  South  of  Mason  and  Dixon's 
line.  The  only  doubt  is  suggested  by  some  Southern 


108  SOUTHERN    POLITICS. 

Democrats,  who  have  the  slenderest  confidence  in  the 
honesty  of  their  Populist  allies.  These  think  it  very 
possible  that  if  the  electors  were  nearly  equal  for 
Bryan  and  M'Kinley,  the  money  power,  which  is 
pretty  nearly  all  on  the  Eepublican  side,  would  be 
used  to  buy  up  a  few  eligible  Populists.  It  would  pay 
the  monopolists  of  the  great  trusts,  I  was  assured,  to 
give  a  million  apiece  for  enough  of  such  commodities 
to  turn  the  election.  Only  I  should  not  care  to  be  the 
deserting  Populist  when  he  went  down  South  again, 
where  men  carry  revolvers.  And  I  can  hardly  doubt 
that  the  difficulty  of  getting  Democrats  and  Populists 
to  agree  on  a  coalition  list  of  electors  and  State  candi 
dates  is  a  grave  anxiety  to  Mr  Bryan's  managers. 
Senator  Faulkner  refused  to  admit  this  into  his  calcula 
tions  at  all.  Nevertheless,  I  quote  his  estimate  of  the 
chances,  not  because  I  believe  much  in  it,  or  in  any 
other  public  forecast  at  this  stage,  but  because  it  is  to 
a  certain  extent  official,  and  because  Mr  Faulkner 
counted  his  chickens  with  a  moderation  that  is  con 
spicuously  absent  in  most  such  statements.  The  im 
pression  I  took  away  was  that  he  expected  it  to  be  a 
near  thing,  and,  balancing  everything,  was  not  unpre 
pared  for  defeat. 

At  Richmond  I  chanced  upon  General  Buckner,  the 
stout  old  Confederate  soldier,  who  is  candidate  for 
Vice-President  on  behalf  of  the  Gold  Democrats,  the 
Liberal  Unionists  of  this  campaign.  I  thought  I 
might  correct  my  Silver  Democratic  estimate  with 


GENERAL  BUCKNER.  109 

his  aid.  The  battles  and  marches  of  thirty  years  back 
have  left  little  enough  mark  on  his  hale  figure  ;  the 
hearty  voice  and  clear  blue  eye  belie  the  flowing  silver 
of  his  hair  and  the  written  record  of  his  eighty  years. 
Dressed  in  black  broadcloth,  with  low  waistcoat  and 
white  tie,  he  recalled  the  old  English  type  of  which 
Mr  Jowett  was  the  last.  Though  I  never  remember 
to  have  seen  the  late  Master  of  Balliol  smoking  a  long 
corn-cob  pipe,  nor  did  he  usually  receive  visitors  in 
the  act  of  putting  on  his  coat.  General  Buckner  did 
both,  and  remained  a  courtly  gentleman. 

About  his  own  chance  and  that  of  his  colleague 
General  Palmer,  he  said  little :  everybody  knows  that 
they  have  none.  But  he  was  quite  confident  that 
their  candidature  meant  the  defeat  of  Mr  Bryan. 
"  I  think  you  may  assure  your  people  that  it's  all 
right,"  he  cried  sturdily.  To  English  ideas  it  may 
appear  strange  that  this  candidature  should  help  Mr 
M'Kinley ;  it  seems  like  helping  a  Tory  to  beat  a 
Radical  by  running  a  Liberal  Unionist.  But  in  the 
United  States  a  man  is  more  liable  to  vote  against 
his  principles  than  against  his  party.  "  And  do  you 
think,"  I  inquired,  "  there's  any  danger  of  serious 
trouble  ?  "  "  Oh  no,"  smiled  the  man  who  in  his  day 
had  really  fought  against  the  Union.  "  We  take 
these  things  very  keenly  at  the  time,  but  we're  as 
good  friends  as  ever  when  the  fight's  over.  One  or 
two  million  Democrats  will  have  come  back  and  be 
voting  with  us  for  the  gold  standard  two  years  hence." 


110  SOUTHERN   POLITICS. 

How  likely  this  may  be  it  is  not  for  me  to  say, 
But  one  thing  at  least  is  tolerably  certain :  the  South 
will  go  dead  against  the  North  now  and  in  the  future 
in  any  way  it  gets  a  chance.  I  had  imagined  before 
I  went  South  that  the  war  feeling  was  dead  and  buried 
years  ago:  I  was  astonished  at  the  bitterness  that 
survives.  In  the  train  to  Kichinond  was  a  Virginian 
gentleman  returning  from  abroad,  and  for  a  long  time 
he  refused  to  take  into  his  conversation  a  third  pas 
senger  who  sat  in  a  corner  of  the  little  smoking- 
compartment.  He  thought  he  was  a  Northerner. 
But  presently  he  discovered  that  this  too  was  a 
Southern  man,  a  North  Carolinian.  In  two  minutes 
they  were  side  by  side,  comparing  this  general  with 
that,  and  exchanging  stories  of  the  battles  they  had 
been  in.  After  the  Virginian  had  gone  I  talked  with 
the  other.  "  Do  you  know,  sir,"  he  said,  "  that  the 
United  States  Government  is  publishing  all  the  rec 
ords  of  the  war,  Federal  and  Confederate  together  ? 
And  these  records  show,  sir,  that  to  the  North's  four 
million  we  never  had  more  than  six  hundred  thousand 
men.  One  of  their  own  colonels  has  admitted  that  on 
no  one  day,  what  with  wounds  and  sickness,  and  never 
knowing  when  the  negroes  would  not  rise  and  kill  the 
women,  could  the  South  put  more  than  two  hundred 
thousand  men  in  line.  Why,  at  the  end,  at  Appomat- 
tox,  with  Lee,  there  were  no  more  than  nine  thousand 
rifles  surrendered.  Lee  was  always  weak;  he  always 
had  to  be  thinking  of  some  device  to  get  even  with 


THE  DAYS   OF  RECONSTRUCTION.  Ill 

'em.  Ah,  sir,  he  was  every  inch  a  general,  was  Lee." 
I  told  him  that  in  England  we  had  always  thought 
so.  "  Yes ;  a  few  people  have  done  us  justice.  But 
the  North  has  the  ear  of  the  world;  they  write  the 
books  and  issue  the  publications,  and  we  sit  here  at 
home,  and  nobody  ever  thinks  of  us  any  more." 

I  was  amazed  to  find  this  smouldering  passion — the 
more  so  as  this  instance  was  not  an  isolated  one.  I 
think  it  comes  less  from  vengeful  memories  of  the 
war  than  from  what  followed  after  the  war.  When 
the  blacks  became  free  men  and  voters,  there  de 
scended  from  the  North  a  gang  of  the  most  unscru 
pulous  Eepublican  bosses.  These  political  pirates 
organised  and  led  the  negroes,  and  bled  the  country 
till  it  was  white  as  veal.  The  debt  of  North  Carolina 
alone  went  up  to  thirty  million  dollars,  and  the  more 
the  debt  grew  the  more  the  taxes  grew.  Money  was 
not  accounted  for,  was  not  spent ;  it  simply  melted 
away.  At  last  the  patience  of  the  whites  broke,  and 
in  South  Carolina  was  formerly  the  organisation  of 
the  Ked  Shirts.  They  put  up  a  Southern  general  for 
Governor,  and  wherever  he  was  to  speak  about  a 
thousand  red-shirted  whites  would  sling  their  riiies 
over  their  shoulders,  saddle  their  horses,  and  ride  off 
to  demonstrate.  "  I  was  not  in  favour  of  it,"  said  my 
North  Carolinian  friend.  "I  never  said  a  word  in 
favour  of  it.  But  they  intimidated  those  niggers,  sir, 
to  admiration."  In  North  Carolina  the  power  of  the 
ring  was  not  broken  till  1876.  That  is  twenty  years 


112  SOUTHERN    POLITICS. 

ago,  but  for  all  the  healing  time  has  done  it  might 
have  been  yesterday.  The  Republicans  of  the  North 
have  been  paying  the  penalty  of  their  corruption  ever 
since.  The  result  of  the  years  of  spoliation  is  that 
for  a  white  man  to  proclaim  himself  Eepublican  in 
the  South  is  almost  a  repudiation  of  his  race  —  a 
step  back  beside  the  nigger  and  towards  the  brute. 
That  is  why  the  National  Democratic  candidature  is 
expected  to  do  such  good  to  the  cause  of  gold  in 
the  South.  Democrat  is  a  synonym  for  white  man, 
and  the  white  man  can  be  expected  to  vote  for  no 
candidate  who  appeals  to  any  other  name. 

As  to  the  real  extent  of  agricultural  depression  I 
have  heard  various  opinions.  I  quoted  in  my  last 
chapter  the  view  of  the  first  man  of  business  in 
Wilmington ;  he  thought  things  had  improved. 
General  Buckner  held  much  the  same  view.  "  The 
losses  of  the  farmers,"  he  said,  "have  been  much 
exaggerated  by  agitators.  Both  farmers  and  planters 
live  in  the  greatest  comfort.  The  only  thing  they 
have  to  complain  of  is  that  they  have  spoilt  their 
market  for  money  by  their  own  folly  in  supporting 
free  silver.  The  banks  are  afraid  of  a  run  on  them 
if  Mr  Bryan  succeeds,  and  they  are  calling  in  their 
loans."  On  the  other  hand,  a  leading  Southern  editor, 
who  should  know,  and  certainly  was  quite  sincere, 
told  me  that  the  losses  by  the  depreciation  of  prices 
had  been  terrible.  In  Georgia  alone,  he  said,  they 
had  been  computed  at  thirty-two  million  dollars. 


MR  CLEVELAND'S  PARTIALITY.  113 

Another  source  of  bitterness  and  of  grave  danger 
in  the  South,  this  gentleman  told  me,  is  irritation 
against  President  Cleveland.  The  South  believed 
in  1892  that  it  was  electing  a  bimetallist,  and  I 
was  told  that  more  than  one  member  of  his  Cabinet 
was  virtually  pledged  to  bimetallism.  The  President 
turned  out  a  stout  supporter  of  the  gold  standard, 
and  now  he  and  many  of  his  Ministers  have  written 
letters  and  made  speeches  on  behalf  of  Generals 
Palmer  and  Buckner,  and  the  Indianapolis  ticket. 
At  the  same  time,  the  President  is  believed  to  have 
offered  the  choice  between  silence  and  dismissal  to 
certain  subordinate  officials  who  have  given  active 
support  to  Mr  Bryan.  I  think  it  must  be  owned 
that  the  President's  conduct  has  been  partial.  For 
a  Civil  Service  reformer  to  dismiss  some  holder  of 
a  100-dollar  post-office  for  his  political  opinions  ia 
neither  very  consistent  nor  very  dignified.  "  These 
things  make  men  mad,"  said  the  editor.  "It's  bad 
enough  in  the  towns,  but  the  farmers  are  worse. 
They're  fighting  mad,  sir.  I  know  half-a-dozen  who 
are  ready  to  take  their  guns  and  come  out  at  this 
moment." 

It  is  always  difficult  to  say  how  much  set  purpose 
there  is  behind  talk  like  this.  The  Northern  men 
laughed  at  the  idea.  But  they  also  laughed  a  genera 
tion  ago  until  the  first  gun  boomed  out  war  at  Fort 
Sumter.  Whether  Bryan  wins  or  loses  there  is  like 
enough  to  be  a  good  deal  of  financial  distress  this 

H 


114  SOUTHERN   POLITICS. 

winter.  I  do  not  say  that  the  excitement  and  ill-will 
may  not  die  suddenly  away  by  the  second  week  of 
November,  as  it  traditionally  does.  On  the  whole, 
so  far  as  I  am  competent  to  have  an  opinion,  I  should 
say  it  will.  Yet  nothing  would  surprise  me  less  than 
to  find  that  this  time  it  does  not.  Perhaps  the  South 
will  wait  for  the  signal  of  red  revolt  to  be  held  out  in 
some  other  part  of  the  country — the  West  or  some 
industrial  centre.  If  that  signal  should  ever  come, 
it  will  find  the  South  ready. 


115 


XIV. 

PHILADELPHIA. 

PHILADELPHIA,  September  29. 

IT  was  only  by  luck  fchat  I  left  Philadelphia  until  the 
last  of  Eastern  cities,  but  good  luck  it  certainly  was. 
Philadelphia  is  the  most  English  of  them  all — English, 
that  is,  not  in  the  way  of  outward  seeming  or  slavish 
mimicry,  but  in  the  circumstances  of  its  growth,  and 
the  life  and  character  of  its  poople.  Here  is  the  purest 
Anglo-Saxon  citizen  body  among  all  the  large  centres. 
Here  is  less  luxury  than  elsewhere,  but  more  comfort, 
and  comfort  extending  deeper  down.  New  York  is  a 
city  of  offices  and  palaces ;  Boston  of  parks  and  villas ; 
"Washington  of  public  buildings  and  houses  let  for 
the  season.  Philadelphia  is  a  city  of  homes.  Of 
its  two  hundred  thousand  families  it  has  been  esti 
mated  that  seven-eighths  live  in  self-contained  houses, 
who  elsewhere  would  be  in  flats  or  tenements,  and 
that  three  -  quarters  of  these  own  the  houses  they 
live  in. 

After  the  others,  Philadelphia  strikes  you  as  beyond 


116  PHILADELPHIA. 

all  things  a  civilised  city — a  city  where  people  some 
times  have  a  little  leisure.  Elsewhere  they  do  busi 
ness  or  seek  pleasure ;  here  they  Jive.  The  very 
names  of  the  streets  —  Chestnut,  Walnut,  Vine, 
Spruce,  Pine  —  have  a  fresh  and  wholesome  breath 
about  them.  It  may  be  fancy,  but  the  women  here 
seem  prettier  and  the  men  better  set  up.  The  New 
Yorker  takes  a  tram-car  to  go  a  quarter  of  a  mile,  and 
grows  fat;  here  the  physical  type  is  more  athletic. 
The  richer  Philadelphians  live  out  in  the  country 
and  ride  to  hounds ;  the  poorest  rides  a  bicycle.  The 
typical  American  woman's  face — long,  thin,  pale,  pure- 
eyed,  like  an  early  Italian  Madonna — is  here  richer 
and  less  austere.  Middle-class  you  may  call  the  place, 
with  its  endless  rows  of  sober  red  brick ;  but  middle- 
class  with  little  of  dowdiness,  and  much  of  rational 
stability.  If  there  are  few  notable  buildings,  there  are 
few  slums.  If  few  people  are  very  prosperous,  few  are 
very  wretched.  In  sum,  the  Philadelphians  get  more 
happiness  per  head  out  of  their  city  than  any  other 
townsmen  in  America. 

Philadelphia,  like  London,  has  made  itself.  Spread 
ing  from  a  commercial  centre,  it  has  felt  its  way  out 
to  the  fringe  of  manufacturing  towns  round  it,  and 
woven  them  into  a  piece  of  itself  with  streets  on 
streets  of  artisans'  dwellings.  The  old  business  city 
is  on  the  tongue  between  the  Delaware  and  Schuylkill 
rivers.  As  it  extended  and  made  itself  fast  to  dis 
tricts  beyond,  the  value  of  land  in  the  centre  weni 


EQUABLE   PROSPERITY.  117 

up  but  slowly.  In  New  York,  a  man  with  an  old 
house  in  the  heart  of  the  city  must  tear  it  down  to 
put  up  a  twelve-storeyed  skyscraper,  or  must  make 
ready  to  be  taxed  out  of  existence.  In  Philadelphia 
the  rise  in  land  value  has  been  continuous,  but  it  has 
been  steady.  For  result  you  have  houses  standing  in 
busiest  Chestnut  Street,  that  fifty  years  ago  were 
country  villas.  You  have  walls  and  windows  that 
looked  down  on  the  Eevolution.  While  this  equable 
prosperity  came  over  the  centre,  there  grew  up  the 
tracts  of  undistinguished  houses  round  about  it. 
There  are  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  of  them, 
and  you  can  no  easier  tell  them  apart  than  peas  out 
of  a  pod.  But  in  these  houses  the  Philadelphian 
workman  lives  and  dies ;  his  son  lives  and  dies  there 
after  him ;  and  his  grandson  after  his  son.  Among 
the  poor  it  happens  nowhere  else  in  America,  and 
seldom  enough  in  Europe.  In  Philadelphia  this  local 
attachment  is  characteristic  of  rich  and  poor  alike. 

There  are  born  of  this  principle  of  habitation  many 
salutary  features  of  civic  life.  The  fact  that  Phila 
delphia's  municipal  debt  is  going  down  touches  me 
but  little ;  the  fact  that  her  streets,  alone  among  those 
I  have  yet  seen,  are  decently  and  smoothly  paved  with 
asphalt,  moves  me  to  approbation  ;  the  fact  that  Phila 
delphia  made  the  electric  road-car  companies  pay  for 
the  improvement  commands  my  unrestrained  enthu 
siasm.  The  municipal  government  of  this  city  has 
its  interest  as  the  product  less  of  a  few  commanding 


118  PHILADELPHIA. 

personalities  than  of  the  general  momentum  of  a  half- 
unconscious  public.  So  with  society.  Because  these 
people  live  year  in,  year  out,  in  their  own  homes, 
there  grows  up  between  them  the  bond  of  a  neigh 
bourly  friendship  such  as  exists  in  few  cities  even 
in  the  Old  World.  Then  again,  there  are  scores  of 
building  associations,  friendly  societies,  clubs,  religious 
guilds,  and  the  like.  Wages  are  good ;  add  to  that 
these  interests,  every  one  managed  by  the  clerks  and 
artisans  who  constitute  their  membership,  and  you 
have  the  makings  of  a  happy  life. 

A  friend  of  mine  here  has  two  servants,  quadroon 
girls:  they  get  their  board  and  lodging  and  wages, 
equal  to  about  £50  a -year.  Both  of  them  have 
just  bought  bicycles.  One  of  them  is  a  prominent 
member  of  the  Zion  Methodist  African  Episcopal 
Church.  One  day  her  master  was  going  to  speak 
in  public.  "  Mary,"  he  said,  "  you've  often  wished  to 
hear  me  speak ;  you  can  come  to-night  if  you  like." 
"  I  should  love  to  hear  you,  sah,"  answered  Mary ; 
"  but  I'm  speaking  myself  to  -  night."  She  is  now 
selling  among  her  personal  acquaintances  alone  a 
hundred  and  sixty  dollars'  worth  of  tickets  for  the 
Z.MA.E.C.'s  annual  celebration.  A  bicycle,  public 
speaking,  and  a  circle  of  friends  equal  to  taking  £32 
worth  of  tickets  for  a  celebration  —  the  life  of  that 
little  yellow  girl  cannot  be  a  very  dull  or  unhappy 
one. 

As  for  joung  men,  there  is  no  end  to  their  societies 


WORK   AND   PLAY.  119 

and  orders.  My  same  friend  had  a  lad  in  his  employ 
at  five  dollars  a- week :  this  is  only  a  lad's  wages,  for 
an  unskilled  man  can  always  get  his  dollar  a-day  if 
he  is  steady,  and  skilled  mechanics  command  anything 
upward  of  nine  dollars.  That  must  be  put  against 
higher  prices  on  this  side  the  Atlantic.  A  journalist 
told  me  that  he  worked  with  a  compositor  who, 
having  a  fancy  for  the  opera,  used  to  come  to  the 
office  in  evening  dress  as  often  as  he  did  himself.  It 
was  his  fancy,  and  he  could  afford  to  give  it  play. 
One  day,  to  resume,  the  lad  before  mentioned  appeared 
at  the  office  with  a  queer-shaped  parcel.  It  turned 
out  on  investigation  to  be  a  stage  sword  of  the  most 
magnificent  proportions, — price  four  dollars.  He  was 
to  wear  it  that  evening  as  a  Knight  of  Malta,  of 
which  honourable  order  he  was  a  member.  There 
cannot  be  much  wrong  with  the  social  conditions  of 
a  city  where  at  seventeen,  and  on  a  pound  a-week, 
you  can  be  a  Knight  of  Malta. 

But  the  neighbourly  association  which  Philadelphia 
has  been  able  to  develop  has  also  its  pecuniary  side ; 
it  would  hardly  be  American  if  it  had  not.  When 
Tom,  the  Knight  of  Malta,  comes  to  be  twenty-five 
years  old,  he  will  be  desiring  to  marry.  If  he  has 
not  dissipated  too  much  on  the  pomp  of  chivalry,  he 
will  by  that  time  have  saved  perhaps  five  hundred 
dollars.  His  wife  will  have  been  five  or  six  years 
behind  the  counter  of  a  store,  earning  from  four  to 
seven  dollars  a-week,  and,  living  in  her  father's  house, 


120  PHILADELPHIA. 

she  also  will  have  saved  five  hundred  dollars.  Tom 
is  a  member  of  a  building  association  in  his  neighbour 
hood,  which  has  a  membership  purely  of  mechanics, 
and  is  managed  entirely  by  its  members.  Tom  and 
his  wife  set  up  in  a  little  house  costing  two  or  three 
thousand  dollars ;  it  is  paid  for,  over  and  above  the 
savings,  by  two  mortgages — one  to  the  builder,  one 
to  the  association  whereto  Tom  is  a  contributor.  All 
the  members  know  Tom.  They  guess  he  is  a  steady 
and  punctual  payer,  so  they  lend  the  money  to  him 
rather  than  to  plausible  Jerry,  who  offers  a  couple 
per  cent  more  interest,  but  has  little  reputation  for 
paying  cash.  In  ten  or  fifteen  years,  with  decent 
luck,  the  mortgages  are  paid  off,  and  the  house  is 
the  property  of  the  occupiers.  There  is  a  ground- 
rent  to  pay,  but  it  is  constant  for  ever.  It  can 
never  be  raised,  and  the  benefit  of  the  unearned 
increment  goes  to  Tom :  he  can  even  extinguish  the 
ground  -  rent  at  eighteen  years'  purchase  or  there 
abouts.  It  may  be  that  the  family  has  increased 
beyond  the  limit  of  the  six-  or  eight-roomed  house  to 
which  he  first  brought  home  his  wife.  Then  Tom 
rents  a  bigger  one,  and  lets  the  other ;  but  he  has 
always  the  original  house  to  go  back  to  when  his 
children  leave  him  for  six  -  roomed  homes  of  their 
own.  Tom  ends  his  days  as  a  householder,  and  an 
owner  of  real  estate.  If  he  has  done  well,  he  is  the 
owner  not  only  of  the  one  house,  but  perhaps  of 
the  next  and  the  next.  The  acres  of  little  undis- 


MANUFACTORIES.  121 

tinguished  streets  that  you  may  wander  through 
unprofitably  for  hours  are  the  savings  bank  of  the 
thrifty  Philadelphian. 

There  is  plenty  of  good  work  for  Tom  in  and  about 
the  city,  if  he  knows  his  business  and  will  do  it. 
Times  are  bad  just  now,  it  is  true,  and  work  will  be 
scarce  until  after  the  election,  and  then  afterwards 
—who  knows?  Yet  Philadelphia  has  half-a-dozen 
factories,  any  one  of  which  may  put  in  a  not  un 
reasonable  claim  to  be  the  biggest  of  its  kind  in  the 
world.  There  is  Cramp's  shipbuilding-yard,  which 
has  just  got  an  order  for  one  of  the  new  Yankee 
battleships,  and  is  expecting  another  for  a  couple 
of  cruisers  from  Japan.  Then  there  is  Baldwin's 
locomotive  works.  By  the  courtesy  of  the  firm  I 
was  shown  over  this  famous  factory  the  other  day. 
In  1831  there  was  built  here  the  first  American  loco 
motive,  and  the  firm  is  now  at  about  its  fifteen 
thousandth.  From  the  sixteen  acres  of  its  shops 
and  sheds  it  can  turn  out  the  equivalent  of  three 
railway  engines  and  one- third  in  a  day.  From  the 
first  drawing  of  the  plans  only  eight  days  of  pattern- 
making,  moulding,  casting,  forging,  riveting,  and  mill 
ing  lead  up  to  the  moment  when  the  electric  crane 
picks  up  the  two  hundred  tons  of  completed  engine 
and  slings  it  like  a  packing-case  on  to  the  rails  where 
it  is  to  live  and  die.  The  locomotive  engine  is  begotten 
as  a  page  in  an  order-book,  with  every  detail  of  con 
struction  and  dimension  carefully  specified,  so  that  if 


122  PHILADELPHIA. 

any  part  of  it  goes  wrong  in  after-life  it  can  be 
replaced  infallibly  by  mere  reference  to  a  date  and 
number.  From  that  point  on  I  saw  every  phase  of 
its  incubation  until  it  goes  forth  full-grown  to  wage 
its  lifelong  war  on  the  fiend  distance.  Here  was  the 
laboratory  to  test  the  chemical  composition  of  the 
materials  and  the  gauge.  Here  a  man  was  brushing 
out  the  crumbs  from  the  plumbago  mould  of  a  wheel. 
There  another  was  making  the  core  of  clay  kneaded 
round  a  skeleton  of  iron,  which  marks  the  place  of 
daylight  in  the  mould:  when  the  molten  metal  is 
poured  in  and  cooled  the  embedded  clay  is  knocked 
out,  and  the  open  parts  of  the  wheel  appear.  Behind 
him  the  bits  of  iron  from  the  scrap-heap  were  being 
carefully  built  up  like  a  child's  house  of  bricks,  against 
the  time  when,  cased  in  wood  and  sandwiched  in  slag, 
they  should  be  turned  into  the  furnace.  Now  with 
a  fiery  blast  a  furnace  opens,  and  out  of  the  jaws  of 
hell  swings  a  white  -  hot  mass  of  iron.  The  crane 
guides  it  on  to  the  anvil,  and  the  great  steam-hammer 
comes  down  and  punches  and  flattens  it  into  shape 
as  a  boy  squeezes  a  snowball.  In  the  next  room  is 
a  milling  tool  of  tempered  steel  hollowing  out  the 
curves  in  a  connecting  rod  of  annealed  steel ;  in 
the  next  a  cutter  of  tempered  steel  sharpening  the 
knives  in  a  milling  tool  of  annealed.  Such  is  the 
cunning  of  man  to  make  steel  the  instrument  that 
tames  its  kindred  steel  to  his  service. 

Above  that  again,  on  the  top  storey,  was  a  row  of 


NOT  ALWAYS  IN   A   HURRY.  123 

great  engine- tenders  waiting  their  turn  to  be  painted. 
Did  you  ever  think  of  railway  tenders  as  being  put  to 
bed  by  the  dozen  up  four  flights  of  stairs  ?  Perhaps 
you  did.  Perhaps  you  know  all  about  it,  and  will  tell 
me  I  did  not  need  to  come  three  thousand  miles  to  see 
how  locomotive  engines  are  made.  But  answer  me 
this  riddle,  0  British  engineer !  Here  was  an  engine 
waiting  to  go  to  Canada ;  here  another  being  packed 
for  New  Zealand,  and  another  for  Japan ;  here  another 
being  carved  up  into  two -hundred -and -fifty -pound 
fractions,  that  are  to  climb  a  mountain  road  on  mule- 
packs  in  Venezuela.  That  may  be  all  comprehensible. 
But  why  must  men  come,  like  me,  three  thousand 
miles  to  Philadelphia  when  they  want  railway  engines 
in  Barcelona  and  Jerusalem,  in  Christiania  and  Eiga  ? 
Answer  me  that,  0  British  engineer ! 

But  I  arn  no  engineer.  I  will  leave  that  and  walk 
again  along  the  street  of  Germantown,  and  admire  the 
simple  lines  of  the  old  stone-built  houses  hiding  dis 
creetly  behind  their  ivy  in  the  recesses  of  their  lawns 
and  of  their  oaks  and  elms.  I  will  dawdle  again  by 
the  ripples  of  Wissahickon  Creek,  and  smear  my  boots 
with  the  heaped-up  chestnuts  and  acorns  and  the  red 
leaves.  Or  I  will  go  along  Chestnut  Street  at  sunset 
and  watch  the  stream  of  well-built  Philadelphians, 
who  have  worked  hard,  and  are  now  going  to  rest.  If 
I  ask  my  way,  and  then  say  "  Thank  you,"  they  will 
have  time  to  reply,  "  You're  very  welcome."  Give  me 
a  city  where  somebody  sometimes  is  not  in  a  hurry. 


124 


XV. 

AT  THE   SHRINE    OF   MCKINLEY. 

CANTON,  OHIO,  October  I. 

"  IT'S  a  wash-out,"  said  the  nigger  who  makes  up  the 
beds  in  the  sleeper.  I  did  not  quite  know  what  a 
wash-out  was,  but  I  was  certain  that  when  I  woke  up 
at  six  the  train  was  very  much  in  the  same  place  as 
it  was  when  I  went  to  bed  at  eleven.  Eain  had  been 
falling  till  Philadelphia  was  more  like  Niagara,  and 
yet  the  stuffy  heat  had  been  such  that  it  was  impos 
sible  to  move  without  gasping  for  air.  When  I  looked 
out  of  the  window  yesterday  morning  the  clear  sun 
shine  was  struggling  to  get  the  better  of  the  early 
frost.  I  got  up  and  took  a  morning  constitutional  on 
the  line,  and  there  learnt  the  truth. 

The  rivers  had  risen  and  the  winds  had  blown,  and 
a  bridge  between  us  and  Pittsburgh  had  been  carried 
away.  After  seven  hours  of  alternate  standstill  and 
going  back,  we  were  now  about  to  fetch  a  circuit  of  a 
matter  of  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  on  to  the  main 
line  again.  So  we  climbed  meekly  on  board,  and 


THROUGH    PENNSYLVANIA.  125 

clotheless,  break  fast/less,  and  with  the  certainty  of 
being  ten  to  twelve  hours  late  everywhere,  off  we 
went.  I  had  never  given  the  Americans  credit  for 
being  a  patient  people,  and  I  was  astonished  at  their 
philosophy.  They  smiled,  and  appeared  to  take  it  as 
a  natural  incident  of  railway  travel — unfortunate,  but 
no  way  astonishing.  If  it  had  happened  in  England, 
every  man  would  have  fallen  incontinently  to  writing 
to  his  favourite  newspaper.  Here  but  one  man  went 
so  far  as  to  write  a  telegram. 

The  train  strolled  leisurely  on  through  the  un 
kempt-looking  fields  of  central  Pennsylvania,  where 
the  farmer  is  content  with  three  acres  of  maize  and  a 
cow,  and  looks  on  increase  of  crops  or  stock  as  in 
crease  of  trouble.  Presently  we  climbed  the  wooded 
mountains — now  dappled  with  every  colour  from  living 
green  to  crimson  and  the  intensest  yellow — that  form 
the  watershed  between  the  eastward  streams  and  the 
great  Mississippi  basin.  Then  we  raced  down  by  the 
turbid  brown  freshet  of  the  Alleghany  river.  Here 
is  the  Black  Country  of  America.  Hence  to  the 
farthest  West  stretches  a  broad  belt  of  coal,  so  gener 
ous  that  the  country-people  have  only  to  break  a  hole 
in  the  hillside  and  take  out  all  their  winter's  supply. 
Here  also  is  iron,  and  in  the  fading  daylight  we  ran 
between  banks  of  coal,  rising  overhead  on  each  side  of 
the  line,  through  clouds  of  choking  grey  smoke,  through 
flames  leaping  from  tall  chimneys  and  flickering  away 
in  narrowing  avenues  to  the  lurid  horizon. 


126  AT   THE   SHRINE   OF   M'KINLEY. 

At  Pittsburgh  came  newspapers  and  details  of  the 
great  storm.  It  was  the  greatest  the  world  had  ever 
seen — at  least  the  greatest  for  a  long  time.  Had  it 
not  carried  clean  away  the  greatest  bridge  in  the 
world — that  is,  the  greatest  of  its  own  particular 
kind  ?  To  find  enough  greatest  things  on  earth  to  go 
round  such  a  large  continent,  it  may  be  here  observed, 
necessitates  a  good  deal  of  rather  minute  subdivision. 
The  big  cities  have  the  greatest  thing  on  earth  right 
out ;  the  small  ones  invent  a  special  brand  of  it,  and 
have  the  greatest  on  earth  of  that.  As  for  the  storm, 
it  was  a  very  great  one,  and  I  doubt  not  that  the 
newspaper  correspondents  on  thia  side  will  have  done 
it  full  justice.  I  can  add  nothing  to  them,  for  I  was 
asleep  through  the  thick  of  it. 

There  appeared  in  the  train  at  Pittsburgh,  or  there 
abouts,  a  phenomenon  of  far  more  interest  to  the 
philosophic  mind  than  a  hundred  of  the  greatest 
storms  and  washes  -  out  ever  seen.  This  was  Mr 
M'Kinley's  brother.  It  will  probably  be  news  to 
most  Britons  that  Mr  M'Kinley  so  much  as  has  a 
brother.  Yet  in  the  spectacle  of  that  brother  in  the 
smoking-compartment  American  democracy  was  writ 
so  large  as  few  people  have  the  luck  to  see  it.  He 
was  not  unlike  the  pictures  of  the  candidate.  He  was 
stout,  and  his  trousers  were  tight ;  so  very  obviously 
were  his  boots.  Of  his  discourse  it  is  not  needful  to 
speak ;  it  was  shrewd  and  good-humoured  rather  than 
grammatical.  He  was  not  unmindful  of  the  spittoon. 


HIS   BROTHER.  127 

He  talked  quite  freely  about  his  celebrated  brother, 
aud  he  talked  to  everybody  who  liked  to  talk  with 
him.  The  waiters  in  the  dining-car  chaffed  him,  and 
the  conductor  slapped  him  on  the  back.  This  morning 
I  met  him  again  in  a  Canton  newspaper  office;  he 
was  diverting  his  mind  with  a  little  larking  among 
the  reporters.  ISTow,  do  try  to  imagine  it.  When  you 
can  conceive  the  brother  of  the  man  who  has  more 
than  an  even  chance  of  becoming  the  first  citizen 
among  sixty  millions  larking  with  provincial  news 
paper  reporters  and  slapped  on  the  back  by  the  con 
ductor  of  a  railway-train — why,  then  you  will  be  a 
good  step  on  towards  the  comprehension  of  the  United 
States  of  America. 

There  was  instruction  again  to  be  gleaned  when  I 
reached  Canton  and  sallied  out  this  morning  in  the 
drizzling  aftermath  of  the  great  storm.  In  England 
you  would  look  for  the  man  who  is  going  to  be  Presi 
dent  in  London ;  in  France,  where  but  in  Paris  ?  He 
might  have  been  born  where  he  liked,  but  in  the 
capital  he  would  surely  be  found.  In  the  United 
States  the  man  whose  name  and  features  confront  you 
in  every  corner  of  their  millions  of  square  miles  lives 
in  a  two-storeyed  wooden  house  in  a  little  town  that 
but  for  him  nobody  would  ever  have  heard  of.  Not 
but  what  Canton  also  has  its  greatest  things  on  earth, 
as  the  Cantonese  will  take  early  occasion  to  inform 
you.  Just  now  it  has  two.  One  is  but  temporary — 
the  silver  bullion  statue  which  formed  the  exhibit  of 


128  AT  THE   SHRINE  OF  M'KINLEY. 

Montana  at  the  World's  Fair.  In  due  time  it  is  to 
take  its  rightful  place  in  Montana's  Capitol,  but  Mon 
tana's  Capitol  is  not  yet  built,  and  it  is  filling  up  its 
time  with  starring  in  the  provinces.  The  other  is  a 
watch-case  factory,  which,  being  ignorant  how  watch- 
cases  are  made  and  desirous  to  remain  so,  I  did  not 
visit.  Still,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  Canton  has  no 
more  than  40,000  inhabitants  at  the  outside.  This 
is  not  so  big  but  that  a  good  proportion  of  its  citizens 
know  Mr  M'Kinley  to  speak  to,  and  nearly  all  by 
sight.  His  mother  still  lives  here  in  a  tiny  cottage 
by  the  roadside.  And  here  he  sits  among  his  fellow- 
citizens,  and  waits  to  be  made  the  governor  of  the 
largest  civilised  population  in  the  world.  There  is  a 
democracy  among  towns  as  among  men,  and  it  has 
been  well  said  that  if  the  United  States  have  no 
capital  they  have  also  no  provinces.  The  good  side  of 
this  is  that  otherwise  such  democracy  must  quickly 
crush  out  individuality.  The  dubious  side  of  it  is  the 
frequent  opinion  that,  "  If  Bill  M'Kinley  gets  in,  he 
ought  to  do  something  for  Canton."  But,  whether  for 
one  reason  or  the  other,  there  is  no  doubt  about  Can 
ton's  enthusiasm  for  its  citizen.  I  walked  to  his  house 
under  banner  after  banner ;  no  shop  window  and  few 
private  houses  lacked  at  least  one  of  his  portraits. 
So  I  came  to  the  two-storeyed  wooden  house  with 
green  window -frames  and  red  shutters,  one  of  a 
row.  Before  it  was  a  broken  fence,  part  iron,  part 
wood.  Also  the  place  where  a  lawn  should  have  been, 


THE   CANDIDATE.  129 

but  not  a  blade  had  the  feet  of  pious  pilgrims  left 
there. 

If  you  want  to  see  a  Presidential  candidate  you 
ring  the  bell  and  walk  in  and  see  him.  That  is  what 
he  is  there  for.  I  rang  and  walked  in  ;  Mr  M'Kinley 
was  sitting  on  a  rocking-chair  in  a  little  office  not  ten 
feet  from  the  door.  His  strong,  clean-shaven  face  has 
a  suggestion  of  Charles  Bradlaugh ;  there  is  the  same 
lofty  and  massive  forehead,  the  same  mastiff  power  of 
chin  and  jaw.  Clear  eyes,  wide  nose,  full  lips — all  his 
features  suggest  dominant  will  and  energy  rather  than 
subtlety  of  mind  or  emotion.  He  had  on  the  frock- 
coat  in  which  he  was  presently  to  address  deputations, 
and  loosely  tied  brown  slippers  in  which  he  was  not. 
He  also  was  not  unmindful  of  the  spittoon.  Yet  with 
that  he  is  gifted  with  a  kindly  courtesy  that  is  plainly 
genuine  and  completely  winning.  I  am  no  more  pre 
judiced  in  favour  of  the  apostle  of  Protection  than 
any  other  Englishman  ;  yet  it  was  impossible  not  to 
feel — absurd  as  it  seemed — that  he  was  really  glad  to 
see  a  wandering  newspaper  correspondent  from  the 
country  against  which  his  whole  policy  has  for  years 
been  directed.  Not  to  be  tedious,  his  personality  pre 
sents  a  rare  combination  of  strength  and  charm.  But 
when  it  came  to  the  question  of  being  interviewed, 
though  the  charm  remained,  the  strength  got  the  bet 
ter  of  it.  No.  He  had  made  it  a  rule  from  the  first 
moment  of  his  candidature,  and  in  no  single  instance 
had  he  departed  from  it.  He  was  quite  ready  to  ad- 

I 


130  AT  THE   SHRINE   OF    M'KINLEY. 

mit  that  the  contest  was  peculiarly  well  worth  coming 
to  see;  indeed,  he  was  inclined  to  believe  that  the 
whole  country  was  an  interesting  one.  He  went  so 
far  as  to  presume  that  the  election  was  of  some  im 
portance  to  many  people  even  outside  the  United 
States.  But  to  be  interviewed — the  indomitable  chin 
began  to  tighten  up  on  the  masterful  jaw,  and  I  left 
off  asking  him. 

Well,  if  I  could  not  interview,  at  least  I  could  be 
interviewed.  So  Mr  M'Kinley  turned  me  over  with  a 
gracious  farewell  to  some  of  his  political  and  journal 
istic  friends.  In  a  word,  he  made  me  free  of  Canton. 
I  have  no  doubt  that  its  citizens  will  by  now  have 
enjoyed  a  spirited  account  of  me  in  general,  and  of 
my  opinions  on  the  United  States  and  their  own 
good  town  in  particular.  I  may  not  see  it,  as  I  am 
leaving  by  this  evening's  fast  train.  In  the  mean 
time  Mr  M'Kinley 's  staff  provided  me  with  refresh 
ment,  and  took  me  to  see  a  delegation.  Three  special 
trains,  swathed  in  golden-yellow  bunting,  came  clank 
ing  in,  and  a  whooping,  screaming  multitude  surged 
out  on  to  the  platform.  Every  man,  woman,  and  child 
wore  a  brilliant  yellow  badge,  and  most  added  yellow 
flowers,  yellow  caps,  a  portrait  of  M'Kinley,  a  tinsel 
emblem  of  devotion  to  the  gold  standard,  a  fancy 
button,  and  a  miniature  edition  of  the  Stars  and 
Stripes.  You  could  not  move  on  the  platform,  and 
you  could  not  hear  yourself  speak.  What  a  hopeless 
mob !  But  suddenly  "  Fall  in ! "  cried  a  voice.  And 


THE  PROCESSION.  131 

before  I  quite  knew  what  was  happening  the  multi 
tude  had  left  the  station  and  was  formed  up  four 
abreast  in  the  street  beyond.  Then  the  word  was 
given  to  march.  First  came  the  leader  on  a  grey 
horse,  clear  ahead.  Then  a  rank  of  mounted  mar 
shals,  every  man  with  his  badge  and  decorations,  the 
horses  with  ribbons  on  the  bridles  and  Stars  and 
Stripes  for  saddle  -  cloths.  Behind  them  came  two 
carriages  abreast,  tricked  out  in  every  colour  in  which 
bunting  is  made.  Then  three  huge  ensigns,  and 
almost  as  huge  a  mastiff,  neck  and  tail  tied  up  in 
golden  yellow,  led  solemnly  in  a  yellow  leash.  Then 
a  gold -laced  brass  band.  After  them  a  long  pro 
cession  of  ladies,  all  the  black  jackets  splashed  with 
yellow;  and  after  them  a  company  of  men  with  red, 
white,  and  blue  umbrellas  displayed.  Next  a  great 
yellow  banner  with  the  name  and  style  of  the  depu 
tation — Portage  County,  Ohio.  Then  a  battalion  of 
men,  all  in  blazing  yellow  caps,  and  then  a  band  of 
boys ;  then  another  battalion  of  men ;  then  another 
band ;  more  men  with  a  banner ;  another  band ;  more 
ensigns  ;  more  banners — white  this  time,  with  coloured 
devices ;  then  another  battalion  in  yellow  slouch  hats 
to  bring  up  the  rear.  Every  man  kept  step.  The 
whole  array  was  so  long  that  each  band  could  hardly 
carry  far  enough  to  mark  the  time  for  its  own  par 
ticular  division.  Yet  it  never  lost  step  or  broke  its 
formation.  Horse  and  foot,  men  and  women,  a  kaleido 
scope  of  yellow  and  red  and  blue,  music  crashing,  and 


132  AT  THE   SHRINE   OF   M'KINLEY. 

colours  flaunting,  the  long  column  wound  itself  in  and 
out  and  about  the  streets  of  Canton. 

When  Mr  M'Kinley  came  forward  in  the  tabernacle 
to  speak — it  was  too  dripping  wet  to  receive  them  at 
his  porch — the  place  was  like  a  field  of  buttercups, 
but  buttercups  leaping  into  the  air  and  yelling  them 
selves  hoarse.  His  speech  was  not  long,  and,  to  tell 
the  truth,  it  was  not  interesting.  He  is  no  orator  as 
Bryan  is.  Indeed  he  is  almost  the  least  effective 
public  speaker  I  have  heard  here.  He  read  his  ad 
dress  from  a  paper  held  before  him,  not  without  a 
stumble  or  two :  he  was  distinct  and  dignified,  but 
after  the  pageantry  and  the  shouting  it  was  some 
thing  of  a  fall  to  the  commonplace.  He  pointed  out 
with  great  force  that  Portage  County  was  the  finest 
in  the  States.  But  there  was  neither  argument  nor 
eloquence,  and  though  for  the  peroration  he  imported 
a  thrill  into  his  voice  it  did  not  pass  to  his  hearers. 
I  suppose  he  and  they  could  not  help  remembering 
that  he  had  said  much  the  same  to  the  last  county, 
and  would  repeat  it  in  a  few  hours  to  the  next.  The 
next  has  come  in  and  marched  up  by  now,  has  been 
addressed,  and  has  shed  itself  over  the  town.  As  I 
close  this  up  Canton  is  still  dotted  with  dandelions, 
and  I  hear  the  boys  crying  the  '  Evening  Kepository.' 
As  I  said,  my  engagements  compel  me  to  leave  by  this 
evening's  fast  train. 


133 


XVI. 

ANTI-ENGLAND. 

CHICAGO,  October  3. 

"  THE  eyes  of  the  soldiers  glared  upon  the  people  like 
hungry  bloodhounds.  The  captain  waved  his  sword. 
The  red -coats  pointed  their  guns  at  the  crowd.  In 
a  moment  the  flash  of  their  muskets  lighted  up  the 
street;  and  eleven  New  England  men  fell  bleeding 
upon  the  snow.  Some,  sorely  wounded,  were  strug 
gling  to  rise  again.  Others  stirred  not  nor  groaned, 
for  they  were  past  all  pain.  Blood  was  stream 
ing  upon  the  snow;  and  though  that  purple  staio 
melted  away  in  the  next  day's  sun,  it  was  never 
forgotten  nor  forgiven  by  the  people.  ...  A 
battle  took  place  between  a  large  force  of  Tories 
and  Indians  and  a  hastily  organised  force  of  patri 
otic  Americans.  The  Americans  were  defeated  with 
horrible  slaughter,  and  many  of  those  who  were 
made  prisoners  were  put  to  death  by  fiendish  tor 
ture.  .  .  .  The  village  of  Wilkesbarre  was  burnt, 
and  women  and  children  perished  in  the  dismal 


134  ANTI-ENGLAND. 

swamp  in  which  they  had  sought  refuge.  .  .  .  The 
English  would  often  hang  a  dozen  American  pris 
oners  without  ji  moment's  warning.  .  .  .  More  than 
six  thousand  American  sailors  had  been  seized  by 
British  warships  and  pressed  into  the  hated  service 
of  a  hated  nation." 

All  of  this,  and  any  amount  more  to  the  same 
purpose,  comes  from  the  books  whence  the  Ameri 
can  child  imbibes  at  school  his  first  notions  of  the 
history  of  his  country.  I  bought  up  an  armful  of 
them  in  a  second-hand  book  -  shop,  to  make  sure 
that  everybody  was  not  wrong  in  imputing  to  them 
a  great  part  of  the  unfriendliness  with  which  we 
are  regarded  in  this  country.  For  that  such  un 
friendliness  exists,  in  greater  or  less  degree,  in  every 
class  and  every  quarter  of  the  United  States,  there 
is  unhappily  no  doubt  whatever.  It  is  not  always 
apparent  on  the  surface,  but  it  is  always  there  be 
neath  it.  In  the  present  campaign,  it  is  true,  anti- 
English  feeling  is  not  in  the  forefront ;  but  that 
is,  in  a  way,  an  accident.  Hitherto  the  expression 
of  such  feeling  hae  been  something  of  a  Republican 
monopoly.  But  in  this  campaign  the  free  silver 
people  took  the  cry  out  of  their  mouths.  "Are 
you  to  have  your  financial  policy  dictated  to  you 
by  England  ?  Did  our  fathers  buy  our  freedom 
with  their  blood  that  we  should  surrender  it  to 
English  gold  ? "  This  is  Mr  Bryan's  appeal  in 
almost  every  speech.  "  I  would  sooner  see  our 


THE   INFLUENCE   OF   HISTORY.  135 

army  under  a  foreign  general  than  our  money  sys 
tem  under  foreign  control,"  I  heard  him  say  at 
Washington,  and  the  crowd  repeated  it,  and  said, 
"That's  good."  "You  shall  not  crucify  mankind 
upon  a  cross  of  gold,"  in  the  speech  that  won  him 
his  nomination — I  have  heard  it  in  the  phonograph 
— was  an  apostrophe  to  England.  With  all  this 
sentiment  on  the  other  side,  the  Eepublicans  are 
compelled  to  give  Britain  a  rest  this  time.  It  fol 
lows  that  Anglophobia  is  called  upon  to  play  only 
an  indirect  part  in  this  campaign.  But  that  part 
it  plays  steadily.  Few  speeches  are  without  their 
reference  to  Britain,  and  it  is  often,  implicitly  if 
not  explicitly,  an  unfriendly  one.  As  for  any  eulo 
gistic  or  friendly  qualification,  such  as  would  usually 
accompany  the  mention  of  the  United  States  in  a 
public  speech  among  us,  there  is  never  a  hint  of  it. 

Is  that  surprising?  The  Americans  have  a  very 
keen  feeling  for  their  past  history ;  it  is  far  more 
alive  to  them  than  ours  to  us.  The  Crimean  War 
is  to  us  an  incident  of  long  ago  which  we  have 
long  ago  got,  as  we  think,  into  its  proper  focus. 
We  may  love  Eussia  or  we  may  not ;  but  the  Crim 
ean  War  is  no  factor  in  our  disposition  either  way. 
Here  the  Eevolutionary  War  is  as  much  a  matter  of 
personal  right  or  wrong  as  it  was  a  hundred  years 
ago.  It  is  kept  alive  by  the  numberless  anniversaries 
and  quinquennials  and  semi-centenaries  in  which  the 
Americans  take  continual  delight.  Each  of  the 


136  ANTI- ENGLAND. 

sacres  recounted  in  the  history-books  is  commemorated 
and  crystallised  for  ever  by  a  monument.  Whether 
it  was  done  by  us  or  by  Americans,  by  Indians  or  not 
at  all,  it  is  all  put  down  to  the  account  of  the  British. 
The  very  name  of  Washington  is  a  continual  reminder 
that  England  is  the  enemy.  It  is  deplorable ;  but 
how  could  it  be  otherwise  ?  Except  for  small  wars 
with  France  and  Mexico,  the  United  States  have 
engaged  in  no  foreign  conflicts  but  with  us.  Each 
popular  history  is  one  long  inculcation,  if  not  of  dis 
like,  at  least  of  distrust  and  profound  suspicion. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  every  American  is 
itching  to  be  at  our  throats, — nothing  of  the  kind. 
But  even  that  would  be  nearer  the  truth  than  to  be 
lieve  that  there  is  any  sentiment  of  the  kind  that  we 
have  long  entertained  towards  the  United  States,  and 
which  still  survives  in  part  the  awakening  of  last 
December.  We  talk  of  this  country  as  our  daughter, 
and  of  war  with  it  as  unnatural,  unheard  of,  impos 
sible.  It  may  not  mean  much,  but  the  sentiment,  if 
Platonic,  is  absolutely  sincere.  But  to  the  American, 
the  champion  of  arbitration,  war  is  always  a  present 
possibility  —  with  anybody  at  any  moment.  This 
seems  a  paradox,  but  it  is  easily  explicable.  The  mem 
ory  of  the  Civil  War  is  kept  alive  by  every  possible 
device — historical  articles,  official  publications,  clubs 
of  veterans,  clubs  of  veterans'  sons,  monuments  to 
every  leader  and  every  regiment,  celebrations  of  every 
battle  at  every  anniversary.  It  is  hardly  an  exagger- 


BELLICOSE   AMERICA.  137 

ation  to  say  that  no  American  newspaper  is  published 
any  day  of  the  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  which 
does  not  contain  at  least  one  allusion  to  the  war.  The 
very  political  demonstrations  are  organised  on  a  mili 
tary  model ;  no  nation  in  the  world  is  more  fond  of 
playing  at  soldiers.  War,  therefore,  to  the  present 
generation  of  Americans  is  not  far  enough  off  to  be 
inconceivable,  while  it  is  just  too  far  for  the  personal 
recollection  of  its  horrors.  And  to  these  twin  facts, 
as  well  as  to  a  certain  impulsiveness  and  irresponsi 
bility  in  affairs,  may  probably  be  assigned  the  belli 
cose  spirit  which  unquestionably  conies  over  this 
country  from  time  to  time. 

Now,  granted  the  bellicose  disposition,  why  should 
it  not  be  directed  against  us  ?  We  may  call  this 
country  daughter,  but  it  does  not  call  us  mother.  We 
were  a  stepmother  at  the  best,  and  are  no  longer  even 
that.  Most  families  of  pure  English  descent  have 
been  in  this  hemisphere  so  long  that  they  have  be 
come  American  and  nothing  else.  As  for  the  Ger 
mans,  Irish,  Scandinavians,  Italians,  Poles,  and  Bo 
hemians,  who  make  up  nearly  half  of  the  population, 
for  instance,  of  Chicago,  and  more  than  a  quarter  of 
the  urban  population  of  the  whole  country — what 
cause  have  they  to  call  us  mother  ?  On  the  contrary, 
they  import  the  bitter  Continental  jealousy  of  us, 
and  here  it  finds  a  most  congenial  soil.  The  United 
States  is  not  an  old  nation  as  nations  go,  but  after  all 
it  is  old  enough  to  stand  for  itself  and  to  do  without 


138  ANTI- ENGLAND. 

a  mother.  It  wants  no  pap  from  us.  The  sooner 
we  put  that  fancy  out  of  our  heads  the  better  for  our 
mutual  understanding.  We  must  be  judged  on  our 
record  in  history,  and  on  the  showing  of  American 
school-books  that  record  is  as  bad  as  it  could  be. 

"  The  best  thing  for  the  relations  of  the  two  coun 
tries,"  said  an  American  journalist  to  me,  "  would  be 
that  neither  should  ever  see  the  other's  newspapers." 
Unquestionably  there  is  a  good  deal  in  that.  The 
first  thing  I  saw  in  New  York  was  a  lurid  description 
of  the  tortures  which  had  driven  Dr  Gallagher  and 
his  fellow-dynamiter  mad,  reinforced  by  an  illustra 
tion  representing  an  English  warder  flogging  a  half- 
naked  prisoner.  It  must  be  remembered  that  the 
ordinary  untravelled  American  is  almost  more  blankly 
ignorant  of  Europe  and  its  ways  than  the  ordinary 
European  is  of  America.  A  newspaper  editor  asked 
me  whether  Canton,  with  its  bare  40,000  inhabitants, 
was  not  larger  than  Sheffield.  When  an  editor  thinks 
thus,  his  readers  will  swallow  any  yarn  that  anybody 
likes  to  pitch  about  us.  There  even  grows  up  a  de 
mand  for  such  yarns  as  illustrative  of  the  depravity 
of  a  monarchy,  and  as  an  indirect  glorification  of  a 
free  republic.  And  the  demand  is  most  generously 
supplied. 

It  appears  that  there  are  many  causes  of  anti- 
British  irritation.  "  Some  day,"  said  my  friend,  "  we 
shall  do  another  thing  that  will  come  to  you  as  just 
the  same  cold  douche  as  the  Venezuela  business."  It 


A  MENACE  TO   THE  C.P.R.  139 

appears  that  the  fishing  rights  on  the  Great  Lakes  are 
a  perpetual  cause  of  friction  between  the  States  and 
Canada.  The  States  side  is  fished  out,  and  as  a 
consequence  the  innumerable  yachting  parties  that 
gather  in  summer  round  the  Thousand  Islands  go 
over  to  fish  on  the  Canadian  shore.  "  Not  a  week 
passes,"  he  said,  "  without  vessels  being  seized  and 
the  Stars  and  Stripes  being  hauled  down  by  Canadian 
officials.  The  flag  has  been  hissed  and  insulted  in 
every  way.  Some  day  we  shall  avenge  that  on  the 
Canadian  Pacific  Railway.  At  present  they  are 
allowed  to  carry  goods  in  bond  duty-free  across  our 
territory.  If  we  revoke  that  privilege,  the  loss  of  the 
traffic  from  New  England  through  to  the  Western 
States  will  mean  that  the  C.P.R.  can't  pay  the  interest 
on  its  bonds.  And  where  will  Canada  be  then  ? " 

Another  cause  of  mistrust  and  jealousy  ever  in  the 
minds  of  the  Senate's  Committee  has  been  some 
spasmodic  attempts  on  the  part  of  our  Admiralty  to 
fortify  positions  in  the  Western  Hemisphere.  Of 
course  it  means  no  more  by  this  than  by  most  other 
things  it  does  or  leaves  undone.  It  has  built  fortifi 
cations  here  and  there — usually  leaving  them  without 
armament  or  garrison,  it  is  true  —  and  the  United 
States  ask  themselves  why.  Why  do  we  build  a 
graving-dock  at  Esquimault  instead  of  one  at  Hong- 
Kong,  where  we  need  it  more  ?  Of  course  such  few 
Americans  as  follow  foreign  affairs  know  we  need 
graving-docks  in  both  places.  But  the  general  result 


140  ANTI- ENGLAND. 

is  that  the  States  make  a  dock  of  their  own  at  Seattle, 
a  few  miles  from  Esquimault,  where  otherwise  they 
have  no  earthly  use  for  it.  When  we  fortified  Halifax, 
and  Bermuda,  and  St  Lucia — over-fortified  the  first 
two,  as  our  best  authorities  hold — the  United  States 
responded  with  batteries  on  their  shores  and  mines  in 
their  harbours.  And  also  by  building  battleships — 
weapons  not  of  defence,  but  of  offence,  as  they 
recognise  themselves  quite  clearly. 

It  is  most  frankly  recognised  by  all  Americans  con 
versant  with  foreign  affairs  that  we  are  not  wholly,  or 
even  mainly,  to  blame.  They  deplore  their  system  of 
conducting  foreign  affairs,  and  with  good  reason.  The 
foreign  policy  of  the  States  is  conducted  in  part  by 
the  Committee  of  the  Senate  upon  Foreign  Affairs. 
This  Committee  is  composed  of  men  of  experience, 
who  have  served  upon  it  four,  eight,  twelve  years. 
They  know  their  world,  they  understand  their 
diplomacy,  and  they  do  not  blunder.  But  besides 
these,  there  is  a  vast  deal  of  initiative  left  to  the 
President  and  the  Secretary  of  State.  They  are 
usually  American  politicians  pure  and  simple,  though 
not  always  quite  pure  or  quite  simple  either.  They 
approach  foreign  problems  without  knowledge  of  the 
usages  of  international  good  breeding,  and  with  one 
eye  steadily  fixed  on  public  feeling  among  the  electors 
at  home.  And  almost  as  surely  as  they  take  a  prob 
lem  of  foreign  politics  into  their  own  hands,  they 
blunder. 


141 

"  Well,"  I  said,  "  it  seems  to  be  a  string  of  misunder 
standings  and  blunders  on  each  side.  But  has  it  gone 
too  far  ?  Is  it  come  to  Mr  Olney's  theory  that  any 
union  between  us  and  any  part  of  this  hemisphere  is 
unnatural  and  impolitic  ?  " 

"That,  of  course,  was  unpardonably  tactless,  and 
only  possible  in  a  country  that  puts  an  attorney  into 
a  Government  office  and  expects  him  to  become  a 
diplomatist  next  morning.  But  if  you  put  it  that 
way,  it  has  gone  too  far.  We  do  feel  that  in  the 
future  we  must  not  only  take  up  our  responsibilities 
in  Central  and  South  America,  but  that  ultimately  we 
must  be  the  only  Power  in  this  hemisphere.  Every 
American  feels  that.  You  can  have  all  the  Old  World ; 
we  hope  you  will.  But  we  must  have  all  the  New." 

Then  he  explained  the  appallingly  strong  position  of 
the  United  States  in  respect  of  its  future  armaments. 
At  present  their  Government  pays  138,000,000  dollars 
a-year  to  pensioners  of  the  Civil  War.  As  the  men 
die  these  pensions  fall  in  at  the  rate  of  five  to  eight 
millions  annually ;  in  twenty  years  or  so  the  pension- 
list  will  be  a  white  sheet  of  paper.  That  means  over 
twenty-six  millions  sterling  a-year,  paid  already  for  a 
military  purpose,  which  can  be  diverted  to  armaments 
without  a  cent  of  extra  taxation.  In  twenty  years 
this  country  will  be  easily  able  to  turn  out  a  dozen 
battleships  a-year  without  taking  a  cent  out  of  any 
body's  pocket.  And  that  means  the  naval  supremacy 
of  the  world. 


142  ANTI-ENGLAND. 

If  we  started  the  United  States  in  this  course  by 
some  bungling  attempt  to  get  our  coaling  -  stations 
half-fortified,  then  it  was  the  worst  day's  work  we 
ever  did  in  our  lives.  But  since  the  mischief  is  done, 
and  apparently  done  irremediably,  we  had  better  face 
the  situation  squarely  and  at  once.  I  think  the 
question  we  ought  to  ask  ourselves  is  this,  Are  we 
prepared  to  fight  the  United  States  immediately,  01 
are  we  prepared  to  take  such  steps  as  shall  prevent 
us  from  fighting  them  ever  ?  These  are  the  alterna 
tives.  We  cannot  afford  to  let  the  thing  drift.  These 
are  the  facts.  First :  we  can  quite  honestly  say  that 
we  regard  the  United  States  as  something  more  than 
a  mere  foreign  nation ;  they  have  no  such  feeling 
towards  us,  but,  on  the  contrary,  by  reason  of  their 
vivid  historical  sense,  are  more  disposed  to  see  an 
enemy  in  us  than  in  any  other  nation.  Second :  the 
United  States  possess  already  nearly  double  the 
population  of  our  islands,  and  the  peculiar  advantage 
derived  from  their  falling-in  pensions  enables  them  to 
bear  the  burden  of  heavy  armament  far  more  lightly 
than  ourselves.  Third :  they  are  rapidly  awakening 
from  their  policy  of  non-intervention  in  foreign  affairs, 
and  look  forward  to  nothing  less  than  unchallenged 
domination  of  every  inch  of  the  Western  Hemisphere. 
If  these  facts  are  correct,  then  we  must  fall  back 
upon  one  or  other  of  the  two  alternatives  I  have 
suggested.  For  my  own  part,  whatever  may  be  their 
faults  and  foibles,  I  like  and  respect  the  Americans, 


THE  PRICE   OF   FRIENDSHIP.  143 

and  I  shall  never  cease  to  feel  warmly  towards  them. 
I  should  hate  to  see  us  at  war  with  them,  but  I  would 
rather  see  that  now  than  see  us  walking  head  down 
to  disaster  and  humiliation  a  generation  or  a  century 
hence.  As  for  the  other  alternative,  it  needs  a  deal 
of  self-control  and  self-abnegation.  It  is  not  to  be 
accomplished  by  fancy  treaties  for  settling  by  arbitra 
tion  what  nobody  would  ever  think  it  worth  while  to 
fight  about.  If  the  price  of  American  friendship  is 
to  be  the  ultimate  abandonment  of  all  our  possessions 
in  the  New  World,  then  that  friendship  will  have  to 
prove  itself  a  very  valuable  asset  for  use  in  the  Old. 
It  may  be  asking  too  much,  but  if  statesmanship 
could  kindly  arrange  it,  I  confess  I  should  like  to  see 
before  I  die  a  war  in  which  Britain  and  the  United 
States  in  a  just  quarrel  might  tackle  the  world.  After 
that  we  should  have  no  more  difficulty  about  America. 
For  if  the  Americans  never  forget  an  injury,  they 
would  ever  remember  a  service. 


144 


XVII. 
CHICAGO. 

CHICAGO,  October  4. 

CHICAGO  i  Chicago,  queen  and  guttersnipe  of  cities, 
cynosure  and  cesspool  of  the  world !  Not  if  I  had  a 
hundred  tongues,  every  one  shouting  a  different  lan 
guage  in  a  different  key,  could  I  do  justice  to  her 
splendid  chaos.  The  most  beautiful  and  the  most 
squalid,  girdled  with  a  twofold  zone  of  parks  and 
slums;  where  the  keen  air  from  lake  and  prairie  is 
ever  in  the  nostrils,  and  the  stench  of  foul  smoke  is 
never  out  of  the  throat;  the  great  port  a  thousand 
miles  from  the  sea ;  the  great  mart  which  gathers  up 
with  one  hand  the  corn  and  cattle  of  the  West  and 
deals  out  with  the  other  the  merchandise  of  the  East ; 
widely  and  generously  planned  with  streets  of  twenty 
miles,  where  it  is  not  safe  to  walk  at  night;  where 
women  ride  straddlewise,  and  millionaires  dine  at 
mid-day  on  the  Sabbath ;  the  chosen  seat  of  public 
spirit  and  municipal  boodle,  of  cut-throat  commerce 
and  munificent  patronage  of  art ;  the  most  American 


HER  MOUNTAINOUS   BUILDINGS.  145 

of  American  cities,  and  yet  the  most  mongrel;  the 
second  American  city  of  the  globe,  the  fifth  German 
city,  the  third  Swedish,  the  second  Polish,  the  first  and 
only  veritable  Babel  of  the  age ;  all  of  which  -  twenty- 
five  years  ago  next  Friday  was  a  heap  vol  smoking 
ashes.  Where  in  all  the  world  can  words  be  found 
for  this  miracle  of  paradox  and  incongruity  ? 

Go  first  up  on  to  the  tower  of  the  Auditorium.  In 
front,  near  three  hundred  feet  below,  lies  Lake  Michi 
gan.  There  are  lines  of  breakwater  and  a  lighthouse 
inshore,  where  the  water  is  grey  and  brown,  but  be 
yond  and  on  either  hand  to  the  rim  spreads  the 
brilliant  azure  of  deep  water — the  bosom  of  a  lake 
which  is  also  a  sea  shining  in  the  transparent  sun 
light.  White  sails  speckle  its  surface,  and  far  out 
ocean-going  steamers  trail  lazy  streaks  of  smoke  be 
hind  them.  From  the  Lake  blow  winds  now  soft  and 
life-giving  like  old  wine,  now  so  keen  as  to  set  every 
nerve  and  sinew  on  the  stretch.  Then  turn  round  and 
look  at  Chicago.  You  might  be  on  a  central  peak  of 
the  high  Alps.  All  about  you  they  rise,  the  mountains 
of  building — not  in  the  broken  line  of  New  York,  but 
thick  together,  side  by  side,  one  behind  the  other. 
From  this  height  the  flat  roofs  of  the  ordinary  build 
ings  of  four  or  five  storeys  are  not  distinguishable  from 
the  ground;  planting  their  feet  on  these  rise  the 
serried  ranks  of  the  heaven-scaling  peaks.  You  are 
almost  surprised  to  see  no  snow  on  them :  the  steam 
that  gushes  perpetually  from  their  chimneys,  and  floats 


146  CHICAGO. 

and  curls  away  on  the  lake  breeze,  might  well  be 
clouds  with  the  summits  rising  above  them  to  the  sun. 
Height  on  height  they  stretch  away  on  every  side  till 
they  are  lost  in  a  cloud  of  murky  smoke  inland.  These 
buildings  are  all  iron-cored,  and  the  masonry  is  only 
the  shell  that  cases  the  rooms  in  them.  They  can 
even  be  built  downward.  You  may  see  one  of  them 
with  eight  storeys  of  brick  wall  above,  and  then  four 
of  a  vacant  skeleton  of  girders  below ;  the  super 
structure  seems  to  be  hanging  in  air.  Broader  and 
more  massive  than  the  tall  buildings  of  New  York, 
older  also  and  dingier,  they  do  not  appear,  like  them, 
simply  boxes  of  windows.  Who  would  suppose  that 
mere  lumps  of  iron  and  bricks  and  mortar  could  be 
sublime  ?  Yet  these  are  sublime  and  almost  awful. 
You  have  awakened,  like  Gulliver,  in  a  land  of  giants 
— a  land  where  the  very  houses  are  instinct  with 
almost  ferocious  energy  and  force. 

Then  go  out  on  the  cable  car  or  the  electric  car  or 
the  elevated  railroad — Chicago  has  them  all,  and  is 
installing  new  ones  with  feverish  industry  every  day 
— to  the  parks  and  the  boulevards.  Along  Lake 
Shore  Drive  you  will  find  the  homes  of  the  great 
merchants,  the  makers  of  Chicago.  Many  of  these 
are  built  in  a  style  which  is  peculiarly  Chicago's  own, 
though  the  best  examples  of  it  are  to  be  seen  in  the 
business  centre  of  the  city.  It  ustvs  great  blocks  of 
rough  -  hewn  granite,  red  or  grey.  Their  massive 
weight  is  relieved  by  wide  rwmd  arches  for  doors 


HER   DISORDER.  147 

and  windows,  by  porches  and  porticoes,  loggias  and 
galleries,  over  the  whole  face  of  the  building  from  top 
to  bottom.  The  effect  is  almost  prehistoric  in  its 
massive  simplicity,  something  like  the  cyclopean  ruins 
of  Mycenae  or  Tiryns.  The  great  stones  with  the 
open  arches  and  galleries  make  up  a  combination  of 
solid  strength  and  breeziness,  admirably  typical  of  the 
spirit  of  the  place.  On  the  other  side  of  the  Drive  is 
the  blue  expanse  of  lake ;  in  between,  broad  roads  and 
ribbons  of  fresh  grass.  Yet  here  and  there,  among 
the  castles  of  the  magnates,  you  will  come  on  a  little 
one-storeyed  wooden  shanty,  squatting  many  feet  below 
the  level  of  the  road,  paint  and  washed-out  playbills 
peeling  off  it,  and  the  broken  windows  hanging  in 
shreds.  Then  again  will  come  a  patch  of  empty 
scrubby  waste,  choked  with  rank  weeds  and  rubble. 
It  is  the  same  thing  with  the  carriages  in  which  the 
millionaires  and  their  families  drive  up  and  down 
after  church  on  Sunday.  They  are  gorgeously  built 
*nd  magnificently  horsed,  only  the  coachman  is  hump- 
«ig  his  back  or  the  footman  is  crossing  his  legs.  These 
are  trivialities,  but  not  altogether  insignificant.  The 
desire  to  turn  out  in  style  is  there,  and  the  failure  in 
a  little  thing  betrays  a  carelessness  of  detail,  an  in 
capacity  for  order  and  proportion,  which  are  of  the 
essence  of  Chicago.  Never  was  a  better  found  vessel 
spoiled  for  a  ha'porth  of  tar. 

It  will  be  well  worth  your  while  again  to  go  South 
to  Washington  Park  and  Jackson  Park,  where  the 


148  CHICAGO. 

World's  Fair  was  held.  Chicago,  straggling  over  a 
hundred  and  eighty -six  square  miles,  was  rather  a 
tract  of  houses  than  an  organic  city  until  somebody 
conceived  the  idea  of  coupling  her  up  with  a  ring  of 
parks  connected  by  planted  boulevards.  The  southern 
end  of  the  system  rests  on  the  Lake  at  these  two 
parks.  Chicago  believes  that  her  parks  are  unsur 
passed  in  the  world,  and  certainly  they  will  be  pro 
digiously  fine — when  they  are  finished.  Broad  drives 
and  winding  alleys,  ornamental  trees,  banks  and  beds 
of  flowers  and  flowering  shrubs,  lakes  and  ornamental 
bridges,  and  turf  that  cools  the  eye  under  the  fiercest 
noon — you  bet  your  life  Chicago's  got  'em  all.  Also 
Chicago  has  the  Art  Building,  which  is  the  one  remain 
ing  relic  of  the  World's  Fair,  and  surely  as  divinely 
proportioned  an  edifice  as  ever  filled  and  satisfied  the 
eye  of  man.  And  always  beyond  it  is  the  Lake. 
Seeming  in  places  almost  to  rise  above  the  level  of 
the  land,  it  stretches  along  the  whole  western  side,  so 
that  Chicago  is  perhaps  the  only  one  of  the  world's 
greatest  cities  that  is  really  built  along  a  sea-line. 
Sparkling  under  the  sun  by  day,  or  black  beneath  a 
fretwork  of  stars  by  night,  it  is  a  perpetual  reminder 
that  there  is  that  in  nature  even  greater  and  more 
immeasurable  than  the  activities  of  Chicago. 

The  Art  Building  aforesaid  is  now  the  Field  Colum 
bian  Museum,  having  been  endowed  by  a  leading 
citizen  of  that  name  with  a  cool  million  dollars.  Other 
gifts,  with  dividends  contributed  by  holders  of  exhibi^ 


HER   INTELLECTUAL   EARNESTNESS.  119 

tion  stock,  brought  up  the  total  to  half  as  much  again. 
Chicago  has  a  University  hard  by,  which  has  come 
out  westward,  like  Mahomet  to  the  mountain,  to 
spread  the  light  among  the  twenty-five  million  souls 
that  live  within  a  morning's  journey  of  Chicago.  This 
University  has  not  been  in  existence  for  quite  five 
years;  in  that  time  it  has  received  in  benefactions 
from  citizens  of  this  place  nearly  twelve  million 
dollars.  Think  of  it,  depressed  Oxford  and  Cam 
bridge — a  University  endowed  at  the  rate  of  half  a 
million  sterling  a-year!  Two  other  prominent  Chicago 
men  found  themselves  in  Paris  a  while  ago,  when  a 
collection  of  pictures  were  being  sold ;  promptly  they 
bought  up  a  hundred  and  eighty  thousand  dollars' 
worth  for  the  gallery  of  their  city.  There  is  hardly 
a  leading  name  in  the  business  of  the  place  but  is 
to  be  found  beneath  a  picture  given  or  lent  to  this 
gallery.  And  mark  that  not  only  does  the  untutored 
millionaire  buy  pictures,  but  his  untutored  operative 
goes  to  look  at  them.  It  is  the  same  impulse  that 
leads  school  teachers  of  sixty  to  put  in  a  course  at  the 
University  during  their  summer  vacation.  Chicago  is 
conscious  that  there  is  something  in  the  world,  some 
sense  of  form,  of  elegance,  of  refinement,  that  with  all 
her  corn  and  railways,  her  hogs  and  by-products  and 
dollars,  she  lacks.  She  does  not  quite  know  what  it 
is,  but  she  is  determined  to  have  it,  cost  what  it  may. 
Mr  Phil  D.  Armour,  the  hog  king,  giving  a  picture 
to  the  gallery,  and  his  slaughter-house  man  painfully 


150  CHICAGO. 

spelling  out  the  description  of  it  on  Sunday  after 
noon  —  there  is  something  rather  pathetic  in  this, 
and  assuredly  something  very  noble. 

But  there  is  another  side  to  Chicago.  There  is 
the  back  side  to  her  fifteen  hundred  million  dollars 
of  trade,  her  seventeen  thousand  vessels,  and  her 
network  of  ninety  thousand  miles  of  rail.  Away 
from  the  towering  offices,  lying  off  from  the  smiling 
parks,  is  a  vast  wilderness  of  shabby  houses  —  a 
larger  and  more  desolate  Whitechapel  that  can 
hardly  have  a  parallel  for  sordid  dreariness  in  the 
whole  world.  This  is  the  home  of  labour,  and  of 
nothing  else.  The  evening's  vacancy  brings  relief 
from  toil,  the  morning's  toil  relief  from  vacancy. 
Little  shops  compete  frantically  for  what  poor  trade 
there  is  with  tawdry  advertisements.  Street  stretches 
beyond  street  of  little  houses,  mostly  wooden,  be 
grimed  with  soot,  rotting,  falling  to  pieces.  The 
pathways  are  of  rickety  and  worm  -  eaten  planks, 
such  as  we  should  not  tolerate  a  day  in  London  as 
a  temporary  gangway  where  a  house  is  being  built. 
Here  the  boarding  is  flush  with  the  street;  there  it 
drops  to  it  in  a  two-foot  precipice,  over  which  you 
might  easily  break  your  leg.  The  streets  are  quag 
mires  of  black  mud,  and  no  attempt  is  made  to 
repair  them.  They  are  miserably  lighted,  and  no 
body  thinks  of  illuminating  them.  The  police  force 
is  so  weak  that  men  and  women  are  held  up  and 
robbed  almost  nightly  wiJJbin  the  city  limits ;  nobody 


HER  MUNICIPAL  SLACKNESS.  151 

thinks  of  strengthening  it.  Here  and  there  is  a  pit 
or  a  dark  cellar  left  wholly  unguarded  for  the  unwary 
foot-passenger  to  break  his  neck  in.  All  these  miles 
of  unkempt  slum  and  wilderness  betray  a  disregard 
for  human  life  which  is  more  than  half  barbarous. 
If  you  come  to  your  death  by  misadventure  among 
these  pitfalls,  all  the  consolation  your  friends  will 
get  from  Chicago  is  to  be  told  that  you  ought  to 
have  taken  better  care  of  yourself.  You  were  unfit ; 
you  did  not  survive.  There  is  no  more  to  be  said 
about  it. 

The  truth  is  that  nobody  in  this  rushing,  struggling 
tumult  has  any  time  to  look  after  what  we  have 
long  ago  come  to  think  the  bare  decencies  of  civilisa 
tion.  This  man  is  in  a  hurry  to  work  up  his  tallow, 
that  man  to  ship  his  grain.  Everybody  is  fighting 
to  be  rich,  is  then  straining  to  be  refined,  and  nobody 
can  attend  to  making  the  city  fit  to  live  in.  I  have 
remarked  several  times  before  that  America  is  every 
where  still  unfinished,  and  unless  the  character  of 
the  people  modifies  itself  with  time  I  do  not  believe 
it  ever  will  be.  They  go  half  -  way  to  build  up 
civilisation  in  the  desert,  and  then  they  are  satis 
fied  and  rush  forward  to  half  -  civilise  some  place 
further  on.  It  is  not  that  they  are  incapable  of 
thoroughness,  but  that  in  certain  things  they  do  not 
feel  the  need  of  it.  In  Chicago  there  is  added  to 
this  what  looks  like  a  fundamental  incapacity  for 
government.  A  little  public  interest  and  a  small 


152  CHICAGO. 

public  rate  would  put  everything  right ;  both  are 
wanting.  Wealth  every  man  will  struggle  for,  and 
even  elegance;  good  government  is  the  business  of 
nobody. 

For  if  Chicago  is  the  lodestone  that  attracts  the 
enterprise  and  commercial  talent  of  two  hemispheres, 
it  is  also  the  sink  into  which  drain  their  dregs.  The 
hundred  and  twenty  thousand  Irish  are  not  a  whole 
some  element  in  municipal  life.  On  the  bleak  west 
side  there  are  streets  of  illiterate,  turbulent  Poles 
and  Czechs,  hardly  able  to  speak  a  word  of  English. 
Out  of  this  rude  and  undigested  mass  how  could 
good  government  come  ?  How  could  citizens  com 
bine  to  work  out  for  themselves  a  common  ideal  of 
rational  and  ordered  civic  life  ?  However,  Chicago 
is  now  setting  her  house  in  order.  It  is  thought  a 
great  step  forward  that  there  are  now  actually  one- 
third  of  the  members  of  the  municipal  body  who 
can  be  relied  upon  to  refuse  a  bribe.  Some  day 
Chicago  will  turn  her  savage  energy  to  order  and 
co-operation.  Instead  of  a  casual  horde  of  jostling 
individuals  she  will  become  a  city  of  citizens.  She 
will  learn  that  freedom  does  not  consist  solely  in 
contempt  for  law.  On  the  day  she  realises  this  she 
will  become  the  greatest,  as  already  she  is  the  most 
amazing,  community  in  the  world. 


153 


XVIII. 

AMONG   THE   DAIRY-FARMERS. 

FORT  ATKINSON,  Wis.,  October  6. 

THE  Governor  had  the  air  of  an  eagle.  Large  hooked 
nose,  deep  nostrils,  shining  black  eyes,  ragged  black 
hair,  and  rough  black  moustache,  made  up  a  keen 
and  masterful  head  poised  a  little  forward  on  his 
long,  loose  frame.  Dressed  all  in  black  broadcloth, 
with  a  wide-leafed  black  felt  hat,  hands  in  pockets, 
I  had  first  met  him  striding  leisurely  down  the  wide 
main  street  of  Fort  Atkinson.  He  received  me  with 
a  grave  yet  cordial  courtesy,  as  if  I  had  been  a  long- 
expected  guest,  instead  of  a  wandering  journalist 
sticking  him  up  with  a  letter  of  introduction  at  his 
head  in  the  middle  of  the  street.  "  No,  sir,"  he  said, 
"  don't  speak  of  trouble.  You  are  the  guest  of  the 
institution,  and  anything  we  can  do  to  assist  your 
eyesight,  and  insight,  and  back-sight,  and  around - 
about  sight  we  shall  do." 

We   set   out,   therefore,   to   walk   over   thickening 
heaps   of    tinted    leaves    between    the   white  -  gabled 


154  AMONG   THE  DAIRY-FARMERS. 

houses,  each  one  set  back  from  the  street  in  the 
middle  of  its  lawn.  The  side-walks  were  laid  down 
with  planks  as  in  Chicago ;  but  what  a  difference 
between  the  trim,  sound  boards  of  the  country  town 
ship  and  the  ragged,  rotten  edges  of  the  great  city ! 
As  we  walked  everybody  knew  the  Governor,  and 
everybody  greeted  him  with  respect,  except  the  chil 
dren  and  the  dogs :  these  laughed  at  him,  and  defied 
his  commands,  well  knowing  how  safe  they  were 
with  him.  Genial,  but  always  grave,  he  saluted  each 
labouring  man  with  "  John "  or  "  Henry,"  and  they 
replied  with  unconstrained  friendliness.  Yet  this 
man  had  been  charged  with  the  government  of  a 
million  and  a  half  of  his  fellow-citizens.  He  is  only 
an  ex-Governor  now,  technically;  but  once  a  Governor 
always  a  Governor  in  this  land  of  Democracy  and 
honorary  titles. 

"  I  am  now,  sir,"  he  said,  "  about  to  show  you  my 
creamery.  It  is  not  yet  finished,  but  when  it  is  we 
anticipate  that  it  will  be  the  most  complete  and  the 
best  appointed"— I  shuddered,  for  I  knew  instinctively 
what  was  corning — "in  the  world."  Shall  I  ever  escape 
from  this  tyranny  of  the  biggest  thing  in  the  world  ? 
I  had  at  least  thought  myself  safe  in  Fort  Atkinson. 
Yet  among  its  three  thousand  people  it  appears  that 
this  country  town  divides  no  less  thavi  three  greatest 
things  on  earth — the  coining  creamery,  a  manufactory 
of  dairy  instruments,  and  the  canvas- back  duck- 
shooting  on  a  neighbouring  lake. 


BUTTER  AND   C2Z8AB*S   WIFE.  155 

But  the  Governor  knew  what  he  was  talking  about 
when  he  praised  his  creamery.  Has  he  not  a  dozen 
of  them  scattered  over  the  south-eastern  corner  of 
Wisconsin,  collecting  the  cream  of  all  the  country 
and  distributing  it  as  butter  to  the  consumer  in 
Chicago  and  Milwaukee,  to  the  consumer  as  far  North 
as  Minneapolis  and  as  far  South  as  St  Louis  ?  Does 
not  the  'Dairyman/  which  he  owns  and  edits  with 
the  assistance  of  a  small  staff  of  local  farmers,  print 
twenty  thousand  copies  weekly  and  circulate  in  every 
English-speaking  land  over  sea?  Whether  the  cream 
ery  will  be  the  finest  on  earth,  or  only  as  fine  as 
you  are  ever  likely  to  see,  I  don't  pretend  to  know; 
but  it  would  be  difficult  to  surpass  it,  whether  for 
convenience  in  working  or  for  impregnability  against 
any  raiding  atom  of  dirt.  "  Butter,"  said  the  Gover 
nor,  "  should  be  like  Caesar's  wife — above  suspicion." 

Next  the  Governor  produced  a  farmer  and  bade 
him  drive  me  out  to  inspect  his  farm.  Though  he 
might  have  been  my  grandfather,  he  blushed  and 
stammered  his  coy  excuses.  "  No,  no,  Governor,"  he 
said,  "not  mine.  There  are  other  much  better  ones 
for  him  to  see.  My  fittings  are  all  old  and  ordinary." 
"Your  fittings,"  replied  the  Governor,  "are  not  per 
haps  as  high  grade  as  your  cows,  but  I  should  like 
for  him  to  see  your  herd.  The  buggy  is  hitched  up 
outside ;  take  my  coat,  it  is  cold ;  you  had  better  start 
right  now." 

So  we  climbed  right  then  into  the  light -framed, 


156  AMONG   THE   DAIltY-FARMERS. 

loose-jointed,  small-bodied  vehicle  which  has  adapted 
itself  in  the  course  of  evolution  to  its  environment 
of  American  roads.  The  roads  even  in  this,  the  show- 
farming  district  of  the  States,  were  nothing  more  than 
tracks  of  rough  earth  with  one  side  worn  a  little  hard 
by  the  traffic.  The  farm  we  came  to  was  of  about 
a  hundred  and  fifty  acres  —  perhaps  fifty  over  the 
average  of  this  part  of  the  country  —  with  a  little 
patch  or  two  of  Indian  corn,  but  nearly  all  pasture. 
The  barn  was  over  the  byre ;  they  were  old,  with 
nothing  given  to  show,  and  plainly  a  fair  sample  of 
the  everyday  working  farm  of  Wisconsin.  Yet  the 
byre  was  as  fresh  and  sweet  as  the  epoch-making 
creamery  itself;  the  beasts  were  even  fed  from  the 
floor  for  fear  of  foul  mangers.  At  every  turn  this 
average  farm  displayed  that  combination  of  ingenuity 
and  the  desire  to  avoid  trouble  which  is  known  as 
labour-saving,  and  from  which  the  English  farmer 
might  take  a  useful  example.  I  do  not  think  that  the 
American  farmer,  as  I  saw  him,  is  more  industrious 
or  more  regardful  of  details  than  our  own,  but  he  is 
certainly  far  more  enterprising.  "I  hardly  like  to 
show  you  these  calves,"  said  rny  friend ;  "  they  are  the 
result  of  an  experiment.  Our  theory  is  that  for  a 
milk-cow,  or  similarly  for  a  milk-bull,  you  don't  want 
the  body  of  a  beef  beast  so  much  as  room  to  carry  an 
elegant  udder.  So  we  feed  these  calves  very  light — 
just  skim-milk,  and  perhaps  a  little  hay  or  bran— so 
as  not  to  get  them  fat."  We  passed  a  mare  and  foal  in 


EXPERIMENTS.  167 

the  field  ;  the  foal  also  was  an  experiment  in  breeding. 
Then  we  came  to  a  very  '.lirty  field.  "  That's  an  ex 
periment,"  he  said  *  We  tried  sowing  clover  without 
a  nursing  crop,  bat  we  didn't  mow  them  weeds  off  as 
we  should  have  done,  and  the  result  is  not  very 
good." 

The  combination  of  enterprising  curiosity  and 
neglect  to  carry  the  undertaking  more  than  half-way 
through  was  very  American,  and  especially,  as  I 
should  judge,  very  agricultural  -  American.  But  of 
ingenuity  in  labour  -  saving  evidences  meet  you  at 
every  turn.  The  country-side  is  land-marked  with 
turbines,  each  one  pumping  up  its  quota  of  water  for 
the  stock.  Then  there  are  devices  to  keep  up  the 
water-supply  during  winter,  for  the  thermometer  often 
goes  as  low  as  40°  below  zero,  and  the  ground  has 
been  known  to  freeze  five  feet  deep.  My  farmer  had 
another  idea  to  use  wood- shavings  for  litter,  and  keep 
all  his  straw  for  feed.  He  also  had  a  separator, 
worked  by  a  wheel,  inside  of  which  a  dog  ran. 
Others  use  a  horse  for  the  same  purpose,  so  that 
separating  can  begin  and  finish  almost  simultaneously 
with  milking.  Only  in  this  case — a  truly  character 
istic  touch — the  dog  had  run  away,  and  the  separator 
was  being  worked  by  hand  until  somebody  had  time 
and  inclination  to  think  about  looking  out  for  another. 
The  land  hereabouts  is  rich,  but  stony,  and  encumbered 
with  the  stumps  of  trees  burned  down  by  forest-fires 
in  the  Indian  time,  nearly  half  a  century  ago :  nobody 


158  AMONG   THE   DAIKY-FARMERS. 

troubles  to  stub  them  up  or  to  gather  the  stones  into 
walls,  as  has  been  done  in  New  England.  Altogether, 
the  land  is  not  exploited  so  thoroughly  as  in  England. 
The  farmers  will  raise  two  or  three  crops  of  maize 
running,  and  then  put  the  land  down  in  seeds  for  a 
couple  or  so  more.  They  use  none  but  stable  manure. 
Nor  do  they  feed  their  beasts  high :  my  farmer's  really 
beautiful  Jerseys  lived  largely  on  straw  and  pea-halm, 
such  as  we  should  blush  to  offer  to  such  well-bred 
beasts  at  home. 

The  farming  of  this  part  of  the  world  is  not  the 
real  Western  article.  Wisconsin  has  been  pretty 
well  settled  from  the  days  of  the  Civil  War.  But 
though  there  is  very  little  wheat  grown  here,  the 
general  depression  has  spread  to  the  dairy  produce, 
which,  with  a  certain  amount  of  maize  and  oats,  is 
the  chief  industry  of  this  State.  One  of  the  farmers 
told  me  that  he  could  raise  nothing  at  all  on  his  farm 
that  would  pay  the  cost  of  production.  Perhaps  this 
was  only  a  farmer's  story,  for  if  it  was  true  it  was 
difficult  to  see  why  he  was  alive.  But  another  showed 
me  a  list  of  butter  prices  for  each  week  during  the 
last  fourteen  years,  and  a  melancholy  tale  it  told. 
In  '82,  at  the  height  of  the  farming  boom,  the  lowest 
price  was  34  cents,  and  the  highest  half  a  dollar,  a 
pound.  Thence  it  dropped  to  40  cents  for  the  top 
price  in  spring  and  autumn  and  winter,  and  20  in 
the  summer.  Then  30  and  17;  then  30  and  14. 
This  year  14£  cents  a-pound  was  the  summer  price 


AGRICULTURAL   ECONOMICS.  159 

of  the  finest  butter.  To-day  it  sells  for  17  ;  last  year 
it  was  22  in  early  October,  and  ten  years  ago  half  as 
much  again. 

It  is  heartbreaking  work ;  yet  the  farmers  here 
are  almost  solid  against  free  silver.  This  seems 
strange,  yet  the  reason  is  simple  enough.  Here 
almost  every  farmer  owns  his  farm  clear  of  mortgage. 
Wisconsin  never  had  a  boom  on  the  scale  of  the 
States  across  the  Mississippi,  and  what  it  had  is  long 
over  and  paid  for.  Burdened  with  no  rent,  the  farmer 
can  tide  over  a  period  of  low  prices  by  spending  little 
and  growing  much  for  his  own  use.  Moreover  there 
is  not  a  very  large  labouring  population.  The  cows 
need  few  hands  to  milk  and  feed  them  and  drive  them 
out  and  home.  Most  farmers  have  a  son  or  two,  as 
rough -clothed  and  hard -worked  as  any  labourer,  to 
help  keep  things  going.  The  hired  men  are  usually 
young  and  unmarried.  They  make  twenty  dollars  or 
so  a -month,  beside  their  board  with  the  farmer's 
family — meat  of  a  sort  three  times  a-day,  and  as  much 
of  it  as  they  like.  They  save  money  on  this,  which 
goes  part  of  the  way  to  a  house  and  farm ;  the  rest  is 
paid  for  on  mortgage.  Seeing  that  living  is  as  cheap 
here,  where  wages  run  over  a  pound  a-week,  as  in 
English  counties  where  the  wages  of  labourers  with 
families  are  from  ten  shillings  to  twelve  shillings 
a-week,  there  is  no  insuperable  difficulty  in  paying 
these  mortgages  off.  My  friend  drove  me  round  the 
town  as  we  returned,  and  told  me  who  lived  in  the 


1GO  AMONG  THE   DAIRY- FARMERS. 

various  smartly-painted  houses  we  passed.  Here  was 
the  manager  of  the  big  dairy-supply  factory,  next 
door  to  him  a  blacksmith,  and  upon  my  life  I  could  see 
no  vital  difference  between  the  outward  aspect  of  the 
two.  Next  to  the  blacksmith  would  be  a  lawyer,  and 
next  door  to  him — "  well,  an  old  man.  I  don't  know 
as  he  does  anything  in  particular.  He  is  generally 
to  home ;  when  he  ain't,  I  guess  he  works  some  at 
moving  houses."  For  in  this  land  of  pilgrimage  it  is 
far  from  uncommon  to  move  a  frame-house  bodily 
with  rollers  and  capstan  from  one  site  to  another. 
This  house  used  to  stand  at  the  corner  of  the  next 
block ;  that  was  moved  across  the  road  to  make  room 
for  a  bigger  one.  They  are  built  of  wood,  with  an 
inner  skin  of  very  stout  paper.  They  are  warmer 
than  brick  in  the  bitter  winter,  and  rather  cheaper, 
while  the  fire  insurance  is  but  a  trifle  more.  And, 
above  all,  you  can  move  them  about.  Every  man  not 
only  owns  his  house,  but  owns  it  as  personal  and 
portable  property. 

A  community  thus  organised,  for  the  most  part  out 
of  debt,  and  with  no  periodical  drain  for  rent,  is  fairly 
well  armed  to  stand  a  spell  of  depression.  Moreover, 
this  season,  although  prices  have  been  low,  the  yield 
of  everything  has  been  very  good.  The  Governor's 
lady  told  me  that,  desiring  to  give  away  the  surplus 
produce  of  her  garden,  she  could  find  absolutely 
nobody  who  cared  to  take  it.  For  which  reasons, 
the  farmers  of  this  district,  which  is  normally  Demo* 


THE   FARMER   AND    PROTECTION.  161 

cratic  by  a  large  majority,  are  not  only  against  free 
silver,  but  in  many  cases  for  Protection.  Against 
free  silver,  not  because  they  either  believe  or  dis 
believe  in  its  efficacy  to  raise  prices  or  lower  debts, 
but  because  they  dread  the  financial  panic  which  men 
of  business  have  promised  them  in  the  event  of  Mr 
Bryan's  election :  the  very  men  who  would  have  most 
to  gain  if  their  debts  were  halved  by  the  depreciation 
of  the  currency  would  thus  be  the  first  to  go  down 
when  loans  were  called  in  and  mortgages  foreclosed. 
For  Protection,  because  they  believe  that  it  would  set 
American  mills  running  and  American  families  butter- 
buying  :  they  want  an  enlarged  home  market.  The 
creamery  that  sent  out  a  thousand  pounds  of  butter 
daily  now  sends  about  seven  hundred  and  seventy,  and 
that  at  the  depressed  price.  They  do  not  believe  that 
Protection  will  raise  the  prices  of  the  manufactured 
articles  they  buy,  looking  to  competition  to  keep  them 
down.  When  you  point  out  that  with  Free  Trade 
competition  would  keep  them  down  lower  still,  they 
agree  with  you,  but  continue  to  believe  in  Protection. 
All  that  is  true  enough  in  theory,  they  say,  but  not  in 
practice.  They  are  just  depressed  enough  to  want  a 
change  in  the  tariff,  and  just  prosperous  enough  to 
shrink  from  upsetting  the  whole  financial  system  of 
the  country.  M'Kinley  offers  a  change,  but  not  too 
big  a  change,  and  so  M'Kinley  it  is. 

My  wise  and  kind  old  Governor,  who  thought  like 
Bocrates  and  talked  like  Shakespeare  and  the  Bible, 


162  AMONG  THE   DAIRY-FARMERS. 

went  off  at  night  on  a  little  trip  to  make  a  speech  on 
dairy-work — a  trifle  of  five  hundred  miles  into  North 
Dakota.  But  next  morning  I  walked  through  the 
early  morning's  conflict  of  burning  sun  and  piercing 
frost  to  see  his  creamery  in  action.  There  was  his  son 
and  partner  in  rough  tweed  and  thick  gloves,  toiling 
at  the  unlading  of  blocks  of  stone  for  the  road  to  the 
new  building.  At  the  old  building  the  farmers  were 
delivering  their  milk.  One  after  another  they  drove 
up  with  carts  full  of  big  cans  —  now  a  loose -built 
American,  now  a  sturdy  Scotchman,  now  a  squat 
little  German  with  matted  hair  and  beard  like  an  elf 
out  of  Andersen's  Fairy  Tales.  Nearly  all  the  farmers 
of  Wisconsin  are  either  German  or  Scandinavian,  At 
a  window  of  the  creamery  is  a  pulley  and  a  rope, 
which  hoists  up  the  can  from  the  cart  and  empties  it 
into  a  receiver.  The  receiver  stands  on  a  steelyard, 
which  weighs  the  milk,  and  as  it  is  weighed  a  man 
tests  it  with  a  lactometer.  Thence  it  passes  into  the 
whirling  separators,  and  thence  again  the  cream  is  run 
off  into  vats,  and  thence  yet  again  into  a  huge  oblong 
churn,  which  takes  half  an  hour  to  spin  it  into  butter. 
Next  it  goes  into  the  working- wheel,  with  due  propor 
tion  of  salt,  and  comes  out  to  be  stamped  in  pound 
packets,  wrapped  in  paper,  packed  in  boxes,  and  sent 
out  over  hundreds  of  miles.  All  these  machines  are 
run  by  a  single  engine.  Meanwhile  the  farmer  has 
received  a  weight  corresponding  to  about  four-fifths 
of  that  of  the  milk  he  brought — more  or  less  according 


SKIM.  163 

to  its  proportion  of  cream.  He  drives  his  cart  round 
to  the  back  of  the  creamery,  where  is  a  pipe  issuing 
from  the  wall.  He  puts  his  weight  into  a  little  box 
in  the  wall;  it  releases  a  balance,  and  out  into  his 
cans  flows  back  his  due  share  of  the  skim-milk.  That 
he  drives  home  for  his  pigs  and  calves.  "  I  have  ex 
perimented  considerable  with  skim,"  said  a  farmer, 
"  and  the  conclusion  I  have  reached  is  that  a  hundred 
pounds  of  skim  are  equal  to  half  a  bushel  of  corn.  Of 
course  we  don't  feed  it  to  the  calves  alone,  but  with 
something  to  take  the  place  of  the  fat  in  the  cream." 
Anyhow,  these  men  do  not  find  the  skim-milk  left  by 
the  separator  useless,  as  many  people  pronounce  it  at 
home. 

But  my  time  was  up — too  soon.  With  many  pro 
testations  of  mutual  esteem  and  an  undertaking  to 
visit  Fort  Atkinson  again,  I  left  these  admirable  men 
— hard-up,  but  not  discontented,  spending  little,  but 
owing  less,  knowing  that  they  have  a  sure  market  at 
the  best  rates  obtainable  for  all  the  cream  their  cows 
will  give  them,  and  not  disposed  to  jeopardise  that 
market  in  the  hope  of  a  better  one.  Not  so  very  un 
fortunate  a  people,  after  all,  the  farmers  of  Wisconsin. 


164 


XIX. 
THE   CAMPAIGN. 

CHICAGO   October  7. 

DURING  the  present  campaign  Chicago  has  been  in 
name  what  it  has  long  been  in  fact — the  political 
capital  of  the  United  States.  It  is  nearer  the  centre 
of  gravity  of  the  country  than  is  New  York  or  Wash 
ington.  The  population  within  a  hundred  and  fifty 
miles  of  it,  as  I  have  already  mentioned,  is  twenty- 
five  millions — well  over  a  third  of  the  whole  nation. 
The  middle  "Western  States,  of  which  it  is  the  centre 
and  metropolis,  number  110,  or,  with  Missouri,  127 
electoral  votes  out  of  447.  Added  to  the  solid  Kepub- 
lican  East,  they  have  a  clear  majority. 

Chicago  believes  —  and  with  good  reason,  if  the 
West  can  surmount  the  difficulty  of  its  capricious 
rainfall  and  fill  itself  out  with  inhabitants — that  in 
time  she  will  exceed  New  York  in  size  and  import 
ance.  Her  newspapers  speak  without  affectation  of 
"  the  future  metropolis  of  America."  It  is  an  indirect 
testimonial  to  her  political  weight  that  out  of  the  last 


THE  HEADQUARTERS.  165 

five  elected  Presidents  four — Grant,  Hayes,  Garfield, 
and  Harrison — have  been  from  the  central  west,  and 
either  M'Kinley  or  Bryan  will  be  a  new  name  to  the 
credit  of  the  Mississippi  basin,  as  against  the  East. 
There  was  in  this  campaign  the  further  reason  in  her 
favour  that  the  contest  was  in  a  measure  between  East 
and  West,  and  hinged  entirely  on  the  vote  of  the  dis 
trict  of  which  she  is  the  pivot.  It  was  at  first  in 
tended  that  the  Eepublican  organisation  should  centre, 
as  aforetime,  in  New  York,  with  branch  headquarters 
at  Chicago.  But  a  strong  and  timely  remonstrance, 
telephoned  from  a  prominent  supporter  of  Mr  M'Kin 
ley  in  this  city  to  the  candidate  at  Canton  and  to 
Mr  Mark  Hanna,  his  chief  of  the  staff,  in  Cleveland 
brought  the  headquarters  westward.  The  two  parties 
established  their  main  offices  on  the  two  sides  of  the 
huge  Auditorium  building,  and  probably  the  Eepubli- 
cans  are  to-day  very  glad  that  they  listened  to  the 
voice  of  their  monitor  in  Chicago. 

For  that  the  campaign  is  won  to-day  for  the  Kepub- 
licans,  and  won  from  Chicago,  I  think  there  is  very 
little  doubt.  My  own  private  prejudices  are  all  on 
the  side  of  the  debtor  class,  but  it  is  impossible  to  re 
sist  the  evidence  I  have  met  in  and  about  Chicago.  I 
have  talked  for  a  week  with  men  of  all  parties  and  all 
conditions,  official  and  unofficial,  and  they  are  virtually 
unanimous.  Of  course  both  parties  claim  that  their 
canvass  shows  a  majority.  Both  have  mastered  the 
elementary  principle  of  democratic  politics  that  the 


166  THE    CAMPAIGN. 

mass  likes  to  be  on  the  side  of  the  mass.  In  its  pre 
ference  for  the  big  battalions,  if  in  nothing  else,  the 
voice  of  the  people  is  the  voice  of  God.  But  the 
Democrats  are  modest,  and  almost  apologetic  in  their 
estimates  ;  the  Kepublicans  are  exultant  in  the  re 
bound  from  the  panic  that  overtook  them  on  the  first 
news  of  Mr.  Bryan's  nomination,  and  profess  that  no 
thing  can  hurt  them  except  a  counter- reaction  at  the 
last  moment.  The  wish,  often  expressed,  that  the 
elections  were  to-morrow  instead  of  three  weeks 
ahead,  is  eloquent  of  their  satisfaction  at  the  work 
accomplished  in  the  last  six  weeks. 

The  process  of  extracting  information  from  the  chief 
of  a  national  headquarters  is  not  dissimilar  to  entering 
the  ancient  Jewish  Temple.  You  first  have  to  face  a 
sergeant-at-arms,  and  if  you  pass  his  scrutiny  you  are 
allowed  into  the  Court  of  the  Gentiles,  so  to  speak. 
The  Court  of  the  Gentiles  is  full  of  journalists  and 
minor  politicians,  smoking  stumps  of  cigars  and  spit 
ting  on  the  floor.  After  a  due  period  of  probation 
there,  you  are  led  through  a  wicket-gate — I  am  mixing 
up  Solomon's  Temple  with  the  ( Pilgrim's  Progress ' — 
and  up  to  a  door.  Here  your  guide  gives  a  low 
whistle;  the  door  is  unlocked  by  two  athletic  young 
men,  you  pass  in,  and  it  is  locked  behind  you.  This 
is  a  room  separated  only  by  a  glass  partition  with 
another  wicket  -  gate  from  the  Chairman  himself. 
There  you  serve  another  and  a  very  severe  proba 
tion.  At  last  you  are  led  through  the  wicket  and 


MARK    HANNA.  167 

round  the  partition — and,  behold,  there  is  a  strong 
post-and-rail  between  you  and  the  great  man.  One 
more  wicket  to  pass,  and  then  you  can  sit  down  and 
talk  to  him.  Thus  I  went  to  Mr  Mark  Hanna,  the 
great  merchant,  shipowner,  coalowner,  everything- 
owner  of  Cleveland,  who  is  managing  this  cam 
paign  for  Mr  M'Kinley.  My  own  opinion,  based 
on  the  reports  of  friends  and  foes  and  my  own 
scanty  experience,  is  that  Mr  Hanna  is  about  the 
strongest  man  in  America.  Certainly  he  is  the  most 
potent  at  this  moment,  for  he  commands  virtually 
all  the  money  of  the  country.  His  enemies  call  him 
a  blood-sucker  of  labour ;  his  friends  call  him  nothing 
— but  do  what  he  tells  them  to.  In  person  Mr  Hanna 
is  merely  short,  ruddy,  not  thin,  with  firm  lips  and 
a  twinkle  in  his  eye,  and  short  side-whiskers  that 
make  him  look  almost  like  an  Englishman.  When 
I  saw  him  he  committed  himself  to  the  view  that 
he  could  not  afford  to  lose  a  State,  because  he  wants 
so  thumping  a  majority  as  shall  kill  free  silver  for 
ever. 

If  the  Kepublicans  win,  the  cause  will  be  very 
simple  and  easily  explicable.  It  will  be  because  of 
the  influence  of  men  of  business.  It  is  impossible 
to  convey  even  to  the  English  mind  the  idolatry 
with  which  these  States  bow  down  before  the  man 
of  business.  He  takes  the  place  of  royalty,  nobility, 
caste,  education,  and  virtue  together.  With  us  a 
Cabinet  Minister  may  know  nothing  of  banking, 


168  THE  CAMPAIGN. 

foreign  exchange,  life  insurance,  and  we  think  none 
the  less  of  him.  Here  he  would  be  held  grossly 
incompetent  if  people  believed  his  professions  of 
ignorance,  or  dangerously  designing  if,  more  prob 
ably,  they  did  not.  Now,  as  soon  as  the  issue  became 
clearly  marked  between  the  two  parties,  business, 
as  was  to  be  anticipated,  threw  all  its  weight  on  to 
the  side  of  the  existing  currency  and  of  gold.  The 
Business  Men's  Sound  Money  League,  the  Board  of 
Trade  Sound  Money  League,  the  Dry  Goods  Sound 
Money  League,  the  Commercial  Travellers'  Sound 
Money  League — they  sprang  up  in  every  corner  of 
the  country  and  entered  upon  an  active  propaganda 
for  Mr  M'Kinley.  The  effect,  as  I  should  judge, 
has  been  enormous.  "Men  of  business  have  the 
best  heads  in  the  country,"  they  say  in  the  rural 
districts,  "and  they  are  all  against  free  silver." 

Business  went  further  than  sound  money  leagues. 
It  promised  a  world-shaking  panic  if  Mr  Bryan  were 
elected.  You  may  say  that  political  blackmail  is  no 
argument.  But  it  is,  and  the  most  powerful  of  argu 
ments  that  can  be  urged.  Moreover,  it  is  not  merely 
blackmail.  There  can  be  little  doubt  enough  that  a 
most  serious  panic  actually  would  follow  a  Demo 
cratic  victory,  and  the  people  who  would  go  under 
are  exactly  the  farmers  and  operatives  who  incline 
towards  free  coinage.  Even  now  business  is  sick 
almost  unto  death.  Commercial  travellers  complain 
bitterly  that  nobody  will  give  an  order  until  after 


"BUY   AT    PANIC    PRICES."  169 

the  election ;  what  few  orders  are  booked  are,  as  a 
rule,  strictly  conditional  on  the  election  of  Mr  M'Kin- 
ley.  It  is  true  that  clothes  and  machinery  and  rail 
way  carriages  will  be  wanted  whoever  is  President  of 
the  United  States.  But  though  stocks  are  running 
very  low,  and  prices  are  very  low  too,  tradesmen 
reckon  to  buy  what  they  want,  in  the  event  of  Mr 
Bryan's  election,  at  the  still  lower  rates  of  forced 
sales  and  bankrupt  stock.  A  big  shop  in  the  very 
centre  of  Chicago  has  a  board  up  to  this  effect: 
"Twenty-seven  days"  —  or  twenty -six,  or  twenty- 
five,  as  the  days  go  by—"  to  the  return  of  prosperity ; 
buy  while  panic  prices  prevail."  No  doubt  that  shop 
knows  what  it  is  about,  and  is  not  quite  so  candid  as 
it  looks.  But  the  effect  of  such  announcements  goes 
very  far  indeed. 

As  for  the  real  issue  of  the  campaign — or,  I  should 
rather  say,  the  nominal  issue — everybody  has  well- 
nigh  forgotten  it.  Whether  the  free  coinage  of  silver 
at  the  ratio  of  16  to  1  with  gold  would  bring  silver 
up  to  par,  or  leave  gold  at  a  premium,  nobody  cares 
to  ask,  and,  indeed,  nobody  can  give  an  answer. 
Assuming  a  victory  for  free  silver  to  be  on  the  cards, 
the  question  is  plainly  of  essential  importance.  On 
the  answer  depends  the  share  which  the  two  main 
factors  in  the  silver  movement — farmers  and  mine- 
owners — would  get  respectively  out  of  the  booty.  If 
the  farmer  can  sell  his  wheat  to  London  for  gold,  and 
then  pay  his  labourer  and  his  debts  in  silver  below 


170  THE   CAMPAIGN. 

par,  he  is  obviously  the  gainer ;  but  where  does  the 
silver-miner  come  in?  If  the  bullion  value  of  the 
silver  dollar  goes  up  to  100  cents,  there  is  47  cents 
profit  for  the  miner ;  but  what  will  that  profit  the 
farmer  ?  Professor  Langhlin,  of  the  University  here, 
perhaps  the  best  theoretical  authority,  told  me  that 
he  thought  free  coinage  would  appreciate  silver  but 
very  little.  The  President  of  the  First  National 
Bank  of  Chicago,  as  good  a  practical  authority  as 
you  could  find,  agreed  that  it  would  only  send  up  the 
silver  dollar  from  53  to  perhaps  60,  or  at  most  65, 
per  cent  of  the  bullion  value  of  the  gold.  Certainly 
that  looks  to  give  a  handsome  margin  of  profit  to 
the  mine-owner,  and  relieves  the  farmer  35  per  cent. 
But  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  world's  supply 
of  silver  is  practically  limitless,  and  that  improve 
ments  in  transport  and  in  processes  enlarge  it  every 
day.  This  gentleman  knew  of  a  mine-owner  in  Mon 
tana  whose  tailings  had  been  increased  in  value  from 
under  two  dollars  to  two  hundred  dollars  per  ton  by 
a  new  process  of  reduction.  The  Broken  Hill  Mine 
has  tens  of  thousands  of  tons  of  rejected  ore  dumped 
down  about  the  place,  where  ten  dollars'  worth  of 
silver  per  ton  will  not  pay  for  the  cost  of  getting  it 
out.  An  improved  process  or  a  rise  in  the  price 
might  set  all  this  free  into  the  market.  So  that  even 
if  the  silver  dollar  went  up  to  65  cents,  this  authority 
opined  that  the  rush  of  fresh  metal  would  soon  send 
it  down  again. 


BANK-NOTES    AND    GOVERNMENT    NOTES.  171 

Another  factor  in  the  M'Kinley  reaction  has  been 
the  revolting  Democrats  who  nominated  Generals 
Palmer  and  Buckner  at  Indianapolis.  Leaving  their 
party  on  the  currency  issue  alone — or,  as  they  put 
it,  being  left — they  claim  that  they  restored  confi 
dence  at  a  critical  moment  both  to  the  world  of 
business  and  to  the  Republican  party.  That  claim 
might  doubtless  be  pressed  too  far,  but  it  is  in  the 
main  well  founded.  A  prominent  article  of  their 
political  creed  is  that  they  wish  to  do  away  with 
the  present  system  of  Treasury  notes,  to  take  the 
Government  out  of  the  banking  business,  and  rely  for 
money  upon  notes  issued  by  banks  under  proper 
Government  supervision.  I  asked  the  President  of 
the  First  National  Bank  his  view  on  this  point,  and 
he  altogether  concurred.  "  A  bank  currency/'  he  said, 
"  is  based  on  real  assets.  If  I  issue  a  bank-note  I  hold 
something  against  it.  It  may  be  only  your  note" — I 
shuddered  inwardly — "but  then  you  have  a  bag  of 
beans  at  home  against  that.  If  somebody  comes  and 
asks  me  to  pay  my  note,  I  ask  you  to  pay  yours,  and 
you  sell  your  bag  of  beans.  But  when  the  Govern 
ment  issues  notes  it  has  nothing  behind  them.  It 
really  means  that  it  has  not  the  money  to  pay  its 
debts  just  now,  and  when  you  present  the  note  it  must 
raise  money,  either  by  taxes  or  by  issuing  bonds.  If 
by  taxes,  it  takes  something  which  has  already  got  its 
place  in  the  system  of  credit.  If  it  issues  bonds  it  is 
wasting  the  credit  in  time  of  peace  and  quiet  that  it 


172  THE   CAMPAIGN. 

might  want  in  war  or  some  other  emergency.  Now, 
if  the  banks  issued  the  currency,  and  there  was  a  drain 
of  gold  to  pay  our  trade  debts  abroad,  I  should  call  on 
you  to  pay  your  note.  You  would  sell  your  beans. 
Other  people  would  do  the  same,  prices  would  go 
down,  and  then  the  foreigner  would  want  to  be  paid 
in  beans  instead  of  cash,  and  the  drain  of  gold  would 
correct  itself.  The  Government  can't  do  that,  and 
the  gold  reserve  in  the  Treasury  only  serves  to 
frighten  people  when  it  runs  low.  What  the  Govern 
ment  does  is  to  be  periodically  raided  for  gold  to 
redeem  its  Treasury  notes.  The  gold  reserve  goes 
down,  and  to  replenish  it  and  restore  public  confi 
dence,  Government  issues  interest  -  bearing  bonds. 
These  it  sells  for  gold,  and  as  soon  as  the  gold  is  in  the 
Treasury,  of  course  there  is  another  raid  and  another 
issue  of  bonds.  And  so  on  to  infinity,  the  Govern 
ment  steadily  losing  money  all  the  time."  I  asked 
my  banker  if  he  thought  Congress  would  seize  this 
occasion  to  put  the  currency  on  a  sound  basis.  He 
didn't  think  they  would  have  the  grace  to  do  that,  and 
certainly  Mr  M'Kinley  has  breathed  no  hint  of  it. 
What  they  would  do,  he  thought,  was  to  raise  the 
revenue,  which  at  present  lags  some  way  behind  ex 
penditure,  to  a  surplus  of  fifty  million  dollars  or  so, 
and  with  the  aid  of  this  gradually  contract  the  notes 
in  circulation.  But  there  would  certainly  be  a  duty 
on  wool  within  two  years,  and  another  on  coal. 
That  brings  us  to  the  third  chief  factor  in  Mr 


PROTECTION  AGAIN.  173 

M'Kinley's  probable  success — Protection.  I  wrote  at 
the  beginning  of  my  scamper  through  the  States  that 
Protection  had  nothing  to  do  with  this  contest.  That 
was  more  or  less  true  at  the  time ;  but  as  the  silver 
question  was  worn  threadbare,  Protection  has  been 
thrust  steadily  forward.  The  maintenance  of  the  gold 
standard  was  too  negative  a  programme  for  these  days 
of  depression.  No  democracy,  least  of  all  this  de 
mocracy,  likes  to  vote  a  blank  negative.  The  country 
in  general  has  a  grievance  against  the  laws  of  supply 
and  demand,  and  thinks  it  time  Congress  did  some 
thing  in  the  direction  of  their  repeal.  For  most  of 
these  free  silver  would  be  going  too  far,  but  there  is  in 
this  country  no  holy  horror  of  Protection.  And  after 
all  why  should  there  be  ?  This  is  a  huge  nation,  but 
in  many  ways  it  is  still  a  very  young  one.  And  how, 
without  Protection,  is  a  young  country  to  create  indus 
tries  for  itself  ?  Do  not  even  the  political  economists — 
not  that  they  matter — say  the  same  ?  There  remains, 
it  is  true,  the  fact  that  the  Senate  has  a  clear  silver 
majority  of  half-a-dozen  or  so.  The  gold  Democrats 
reckon  on  this  majority  for  a  great  triumph.  They 
expect  this  silver  majority  to  blockade  Protectionist 
legislation,  and  at  the  same  time  they  expect  from  Mr 
M'Kinley's  election  the  restoration  of  confidence  and 
the  revival  of  business.  They  hope  to  be  able  to  go 
to  the  country  in  two  years  and  say  :  "  We  were  right ; 
the  other  Democrats  said  that  what  you  wanted  to  be 
prosperous  was  free  silver;  the  Republicans  said  it 


174  THE  CAMPAIGN. 

was  Protection :  you  have  had  neither,  and  yet,  with 
the  restoration  of  confidence,  you  are  prosperous. 
Return,  therefore,  yourselves  to  Free  Trade  and  us  to 
power." 

But  other  people,  as  well  or  better  informed,  expect 
a  new  M'Kinley  tariff  at  once.  The  Silver  Senators 
have  been  bought  for  Protection  before,  and  may  be 
again.  Mr  M'Kinley  himself — as  I  was  told  by  a 
gentleman  who  had  as  much  as  anybody  to  do  with 
determining  him  to  stand  by  the  gold  currency,  and 
should  he  succeed  will  have  had  much  to  do  with  his 
success — has  no  apprehensions  about  the  Senate.  Mr 
M'Kinley  is  an  old  parliamentary  hand.  "  You  don't 
know,"  he  is  reported  to  have  said,  "  the  power  of  free 
and  unlimited  patronage."  President  Cleveland  has 
set  himself  to  bludgeon  down  opposition,  and  has  thus 
only  strengthened  it.  President  M'Kinley  would  con 
ciliate  it  over  a  cigar,  and,  if  necessary,  give  it  an 
embassy.  And  so  the  manufacturers  of  Pennsylvania 
and  the  Middle  West  anticipate  Protection  immediate 
and  abundant.  A  duty  on  coal  would  hit  Nova  Scotia 
and  British  Columbia,  though  wheat-ships  must  always 
carry  ballast  on  their  voyage  to  the  States,  and  why 
not  coal  ?  But  the  wool  tax  would  damage  Germany, 
so  I  am  assured,  far  more  than  us.  There  are  mills  in 
the  Kaiserland  running  night  and  day  which  never 
sell  so  much  as  a  pair  of  socks  outside  the  United 
States.  To  protect  the  beet-sugar  of  California  and 
Nebraska,  again,  and  the  cane  -  sugar  of  Louisiana, 


ANTI-GERMANY.  175 

means  shutting  the  market,  not  upon  Mauritius  and 
Deinerara,  but  upon  Germany,  which  produces  six 
tons  to  their  one.  1  don't  suppose  that  England 
would  welcome  a  new  M'Kinley  BiJl  with  illumina 
tions  and  votes  of  thanks.  But  if  it  hit  Germany 
harder  than  it  did  us,  we  might  recetvs  it  pitJi  the 
more  Christian  resignation. 


176 


FOOD    AND    DRINK. 

CHICAGO,  October  9. 

I  AM  not  a  chameleon — I  cannot  live  on  air.  Neither 
am  I  a  Napoleon,  to  go  without  my  rightful  sleep. 
Yet  the  air  of  America  would  make  a  chapoleon,  as 
one  might  say,  of  anybody. 

Never  was  there  such  a  stimulating,  bracing  air — 
meat  and  intoxicating  drink  together.  You  would  not 
call  it  a  kindly,  perhaps  not  even  a  wholesome,  air. 
I  have  found  it  drop  from  94°  to  47°  in  two  days.  I 
am  told  it  will  not  uncommonly  sink  from  75°  to  zero 
in  a  night.  An  air  like  this  will  find  out  the  weak 
spot  and  finish  you  before  you  have  found  it  out  your 
self.  Yet  it  is  made  of  tone  and  vigour,  and  in  the 
strength  of  it  you  can  go  for  days  and  nights,  eating 
little  and  sleeping  less,  and  feel  like  a  lion  at  the  end 
of  it.  However,  to  return  to  the  point,  no  man  can  be 
quite  a  chameleon,  though  in  point  of  changing  colour 
a  good  many  politicians  here  come  very  near  it.  Even 
in  America  one  must  eat,  and  what  ?  Let  us  then 


THE   ICE- WATER   HABIT.  177 

treat  of  American  food,  for  it  is  of  more  importance 
than  much  free  silver. 

Next  to  air  the  staple  American  food  is  water.  Ice- 
water  is  the  first  refreshment  served  at  every  meal.  It 
is  more  indispensable  than  a  napkin,  and  the  waiter 
who  will  keep  you  waiting  ten  minutes  for  bread  will 
rush  wildly  for  the  bottle  if  your  ice-water  sinks  half 
an  inch  below  the  brim  of  the  glass.  Eing  a  bell  at  any 
hour  of  the  day  or  night — a  panting  attendant  dashes 
in  with  ice-water.  Sip,  sip,  sip — men,  women,  and 
little  children  go  pouring  the  noxious  stuff  into  their 
insides.  The  effect  of  this  ice-water  habit  on  the 
national  constitution  can  only  be  most  disastrous. 
Water  is  an  unwholesome  drink  at  the  best  of  times ; 
it  is  doubly  unwholesome  in  many  American  cities, 
where  municipal  government  is  largely  left  to  the  friends 
of  contractors,  and  trebly  and  quadruply  unwholesome 
when  iced.  I  do  not  suppose  that  ice-water  can  be 
set  down,  except  indirectly,  as  a  cause  of  insanity  and 
crime.  But  I  will  bet  my  head  that  it  kills  more 
people  in  the  United  States  in  a  month  than  alcohol 
does  in  twelve. 

To  rivet  the  shackles  yet  more  firmly  on  the  victim 
of  ice-waterism,  it  appears  that  until  lately  there  was 
a  strong  feeling  in  this  country  against  drinking  wine, 
spirits,  or  beer  at  meals.  To  drink  in  the  presence  of 
ladies  was  much  the  same  kind  of  manners  as  lighting 
a  pipe  between  soup  and  fish.  An  Englishman  who 
had  lived  in  the  country  for  twenty  years  told  me 


178  FOOD   AND   DRINK. 

that  he  was  once  cut  at  a  fashionable  watering-place 
because  he  drank  a  bottle  of  beer  with  his  lunch.  The 
result  of  this  etiquette  was  that  men  bolted  raw  whisky 
afterwards  at  the  bar,  to  the  complete  destruction  of 
such  stomachs  as  the  ice- water  had  left. 

So  far  as  I  can  see,  this  convention  must  now  be 
dying  out.  Of  course,  it  has  bred  in  many  or  most 
Americans  a  distaste  for  any  other  alternation  of  meat 
or  drink,  and  men  appear,  quite  apart  from  motives 
of  good  breeding,  to  prefer  taking  their  drink  by  itself 
to  taking  it  at  meals.  Indeed,  most  men  appear  to 
abstain  quite  cheerfully  from  alcohol  altogether.  While 
I  have  seldom  gone  into  a  bar  at  night  without  finding 
somebody  who  had  had  at  least  enough,  I  have  never 
seen  a  bar  crowded,  and  should  say  that  the  average 
moderate-drinking  American  drinks  a  good  deal  less 
than  the  same  class  of  drinker  in  England.  For  one 
thing,  the  air  is  a  brisk  stimulant  in  itself,  whereas 
with  us  it  is  often  the  opposite.  Another  noticeable 
fact  is  that  even  when  an  American  orders  wine  or 
beer  with  his  dinner,  he  seldom  touches  it  until  he  is 
almost  done.  But  I  should  think  this  habit  of  not 
drinking  at  meals  is  dying  out.  Everywhere  you  can 
get — thanks,  perhaps,  to  the  influence  for  good  of  three 
million  German-Americans — most  excellent  light  beers 
of  the  Pilsener  type  ;  the  best  come  from  Milwaukee 
and  St  Louis,  but  they  are  good  everywhere.  As  for 
American  wine,  the  only  article  in  common  use  is  called 
Catawba — a  rather  finicking  perfumed  kind  of  stuff, 


BEEF   AND   MUTTON.  179 

somewhat  suggestive  of  white  Capri.     European  wines 
are  only  for  the  millionaire. 

But  to  table.     "  I'm  looking  forward  to  a  good  chop 
when  I  get  to  New  York,"  said  an  American  to  me  in 
the  Campania's  saloon.     "This  English  meat   makes 
me  tired."     I  was  a  child  in  American  patriotism  then : 
when  he  said  with  the  quiet  of  absolute  certainty  that 
American  meat  was  infinitely  better  than  English  I 
believed  him,  and  also  looked  forward  to  New  York. 
There  I  found  indeed  American  meat  bigger  than  Eng 
lish — the  national  passion  for  size  runs  even  to  its 
cutlets — but  very  far  from  better.     I  found  it  coarse 
in  grain,  insipid  in  flavour,  usually  tough,  and  invari 
ably  half  raw.    Only,  in  justice  to  the  butchers  of  both 
hemispheres,  I  ought  to  point  out  one  thing.     Every 
body  knows  that  you  can  get  good  meat  in  London  if 
you  like  to  take  the  trouble,  but  that  in  nine  cases  out 
of  ten  the  proprietors  of  hotels  and  restaurants  find  it 
simpler  not  to  take  the  trouble.     I  expect  that  my 
American's  experience  in  our  land  had  been  largely 
confined  to  these,  while  my  own  in  his  has,  for  the 
most  part,  been  similarly  restricted.     I  have  met  bril 
liant  exceptions  in  cutlets  and  steaks  here  in  Chicago. 
And  in  private  houses,  so  far  as  I  can  judge,  the  same 
rule  holds  good  as  with  us.     You  may  say  of  beef  and 
mutton  as  of  government — that  every  free  man  gets 
just  as  good  as  he  deserves. 

But  he  would  be  a  tame,  inglorious  explorer  who 
should  confine  himself  to  familiar  beef  and  mutton  in 


180  FOOD   AND    DRINK. 

America.  What,  on  the  other  hand,  is  to  be  the 
reward  of  the  intrepid  correspondent  who,  in  the 
interests  of  his  readers,  has  faced  in  its  native  wilds 
the  broiled  Philadelphia  squab  on  toast,  or  bearded 
the  little-neck  clam  on  shell  ?  I  have  done  both.  I 
ate  the  squab  in  triumph,  but  recoiled  before  the  little- 
neck  clam.  But  if  the  clam  appears  to  Eastern  jaws 
composed  entirely  of  rather  sickly  gristle,  there  is  the 
blue-point  oyster — rich  with  a  flavour  he  never  retains 
on  our  side  of  the  ocean,  and  without  the  superfluous 
flesh  of  the  Whitstable.  Of  new  fish  there  are  legions : 
blue  fish,  red  fish,  white  fish,  weak  fish — singularly 
well-named,  for  he  tastes  of  nothing  at  all — breakfast 
fish,  pan  fish,  and  half-a-dozen  more  that  I  have  for 
gotten.  Some  of  these  I  may  have  duplicated,  not 
knowing  the  same  fish  under  another  name ;  for 
instance,  I  could  appreciate  no  substantial  difference 
between  red  fish  and  white  fish — least  of  all  in  colour 
— while  a  breakfast  fish  may  not  improbably  be  called 
so  on  a  menu  because  you  have  it  for  breakfast.  The 
pick  of  the  rush  basket  is  the  blue  fish,  a  philan 
thropist  whom  we  should  do  well  to  cultivate  at  home. 
He  blends  in  a  happy  combination  the  close  fibre  of 
the  mackerel  and  the  oily  opulence  of  the  salmon. 
Salmon  I  have  not  found  good — perhaps  from  not 
knowing  where  to  look  for  it ;  and  trout,  the  noblest 
fish  that  swims,  is  frequently  spoiled  —  again  with 
notable  exceptions  in  Chicago — by  the  sloppy  way  in 
which  it  is  served. 


SWEETS.  181 

The  pilgrimage  through  dinner  is  not  marked  by 
any  very  striking  incident  until  you  reach  the  sweets. 
Of  birds  the  awesome  squab  above-mentioned  is  the 
most  noticeable  ;  he  is  rather  in  the  nature  of  a  spatch 
cocked  pigeon.  There  are  also  such  things  as  reed- 
birds  and  doe-birds,  which  bear  a  resemblance  to  quails. 
Grouse  are  a  good  deal  larger  than  with  us,  but  less 
like  game  and  more  like  poultry.  There  are  such  new 
vegetables  as  green  Indian  corn — sweet  and  fresh,  but 
only  farinaceous  after  all  —  and  fried  egg-plant,  an 
admirable  natural  imitation  of  fried  egg.  But  dinner 
is  not  seen  at  its  most  characteristic  until  the  moment 
of  sweets.  They  descend  upon  you  in  dozens — fruit- 
pies,  jam-tarts,  cream-tarts,  custard-tarts,  varieties  of 
the  meringue  tribe,  biscuits,  cakes  of  every  bewildering 
description.  Men  as  well  as  women  eat  heartily  of 
them,  and  why  not  ?  They  go  well  enough  with  ice- 
water.  I  seem  to  notice  that  the  Americans  love 
strong  flavours  and  violent  contrast  in  the  domain  of 
food,  as  elsewhere :  their  sweets  seem  sweeter  than 
ours;  their  salt  fish  is  uncompromisingly  salt,  and 
their  pickled  pork  remorselessly  pickled.  But  as  for 
sweets,  let  me  own  my  fall.  Despising  them,  like  all 
male  Britons  over  twenty  who  have  mastered  the  art 
of  smoking,  I  yet  ventured  upon  them  out  of  a  purely 
scientific  curiosity.  I  first  endured,  then  pitied,  then 
embraced.  The  explanation  of  my  decline  is  that, 
whatever  else  the  American  dinner  may  have  been, 
the  sweets  are  always  good  of  their  kind.  Even 


182  FOOD   AND    DRINK. 

pumpkin -pie — though,  to  be  sure,  it  does  not  taste  of 
anything  in  particular — presents  a  yellow,  saccharine 
succulence  that  soothes  and  distends.  There  are 
varieties  of  peach -pie  which  recall  and  surpass  the 
masterpieces  of  Vienna,  and  cocoanut-pie  is  almost 
as  potent.  As  for  custard-pies,  cream-pies,  and  all 
the  rest  of  them  —  briefly,  they  tempt  a  man  to 
forget  his  manhood. 

The  order  of  the  American  dinner  is,  in  the  main, 
like  unto  that  of  our  own.  I  have  indeed  detected 
pine-apple  fritters  lurking  between  entrde  and  joint ; 
why,  I  had  neither  the  curiosity  to  inquire  nor  the 
enterprise  to  determine  by  experiment.  I  suppose  it 
is  a  parallel  to  the  German  eccentricity  of  eating  jam 
with  beef,  and  another  token  of  the  American  leaning 
towards  contrasting  flavours.  I  also  note  as  German 
the  country  custom  of  supping  on  a  hot  dish  with 
cold  meat,  salad,  jam,  hot  cakes,  and  tea  and  coffee. 
Hotels  in  town,  on  the  other  hand,  which  provide  a 
late  dinner  of  some  pretension,  economise  on  lunch 
by  providing  only  one  or  two  hot  meats  by  way  of 
oasis  in  a  desert  of  cold.  These  hotels,  it  is  hardly 
necessary  to  explain,  pursue  what  is  called  the 
American  plan,  lodging  and  boarding  you  at  so 
much  a -day. 

The  service  of  the  American  meal  is  plainly  a 
development  of  the  quick  lunch,  as  profusely  adver 
tised  in  the  business  portion  of  New  York.  Its 
direct  object  is  to  stuff  the  maximum  of  diversified 


QUICK  LUNCH.  183 

food  into  the  human  stomach  in  the  minimum  of 
minutes;  its  indirect  effect  is  to  ruin  the  human 
digestion  in  the  minimum  of  years.  With  this  aim 
all  the  various  dishes  are  served  together.  Not 
until  you  have  seen  a  young  man  barely  out  of  his 
teens  surrounded  by  soup,  fish,  three  meats,  four 
vegetables,  two  salads,  two  sweets,  fruit,  ice-cream, 
ice- water,  coffee,  sugar,  cream,  cruets,  a  little  jug  of 
spoons,  and  Worcester  sauce,  can  you  appreciate  the 
full  horror  of  the  quick  lunch.  It  was  an  affluent- 
young  man  I  saw  thus  begirt,  for  I  am  afraid  the 
poor  clerk  does  himself  very  badly.  I  have  not 
assisted  personally  at  a  quick  lunch,  and  I  am  not 
intending  to  do  so ;  but,  being  stranded  one  night 
down  -  town  in  New  York,  waiting  for  a  train,  I 
attended  some  of  the  shops  where  the  clerk  sups. 
You  can  hardly  spend  more  than  fifteen  cents,  but 
then  you  can  get  nothing  more  than  oysters,  cold 
meat — in  some  only — pies,  bread,  and  coffee  or  tea. 
I  worked  through  three  in  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  and 
at  the  end  I  had  to  go  down  into  a  German  beer- 
dive  to  stay  my  stomach  with  stout. 

But  the  American  breakfast  is  the  thing.  Americans 
rise  early ;  you  seldom  find  a  man  who  is  not  through 
his  breakfast  by  eight.  This  life-giving  air  makes 
you  hungry  an  hour  or  two  before  you  could  look 
at  food  in  Europe.  First  you  have  fruit — wonderful 
pears  that  look  like  green  stones  and  taste  like  the 
fruit  of  the  Tree  of  Life  —  and  peaches.  In  this 


184  FOOD   AND   DRINK. 

country  you  call  your  sweetheart,  not  a  daisy,  but 
a  peach.  Then  mush, — so  they  call  oatmeal  porridge 
or  wheatmeal  porridge  or  hominy  porridge, — a  noble 
food  with  the  nectarous  American  cream.  Then 
fishes  and  meats,  sausages  and  bacon  and  eggs. 
Then  strange  farinaceous  foods  which  you  marvel 
to  find  yourself  swallowing  with  avid  gust — Graham 
bread,  soda  -  biscuits,  buckwheat  (or  griddle)  cakes, 
with  butter  and  maple -treacle.  It  is  magnificent; 
but  it  is  indigestion.  All  the  same,  I  look  forward 
to  the  day  when  America  shall  produce  an  invention 
that  will  let  me  go  across  the  Atlantic  for  breakfast 
every  morning.  I  shall  take  a  season  ticket 


185 


XXI. 

THE   BIGGEST   PARADE   ON   EARTH. 

CHICAGO,  October  9. 

'  YES,  sir,"  said  the  millionaire,  "  I  was  then  clurk- 
ing  at  five  dollars  a-week  in  a  dry-goods  store.  There 
came  the  fire,  and  the  store  was  burned  down,  so  next 
morning  I  went  out  to  look  for  something  to  do.  I 
couldn't  afford  not  to  be  working.  I  found  a  man  who 
offered  me  a  job  of  picking  out  bricks  from  the  burned 
foundations  at  one  dollar  twenty  cents  a-day.  But 
the  bricks  were  so  hot  that  I  couldn't  hold  them  in 
my  hands.  As  I  was  going  back  to  the  room  where 
I  boarded  to  get  a  pair  of  gloves,  I  met  a  gentleman  I 
knew  who  manufactured  safes.  His  house  of  business 
was  on  the  West  side  and  hadn't  been  burned  down. 
Everybody  was  coming  to  him  for  safes  to  put  their 
valuables  in ;  others'  loss  was  his  gain.  He  had  more 
trade  than  he  knew  what  to  do  with,  so  he  asked  me 
to  come  as  his  cashier  for  a  dollar  a-day.  I  went." 
He  smiled  a  smile  of  half-wistful  reminiscence  as  he 
looked  round  his  parlour.  There  he  was  on  velvet 


186  THE   BIGGEST    PARADE   ON   EARTH. 

cushions,  with  a  grand  piano  and  a  shameless  Italian 
novel  side  by  side — 0  horror! — with  Mr  Eichard  le 
Gallienne's  '  Prose  Fancies/  and  with  Heaven  knows 
how  many  dollars  in  the  bank.  And  there,  if  any 
merit  lies  in  sturdy  and  resourceful  effort,  he  deserved 
to  be. 

This  little  bit  of  retrospect  is  interesting,  not  merely 
as  showing  that  if  you  are  ready  to  salvage  bricks  at 
seventeen  you  will  be  a  millionaire  at  forty-two,  but 
also  as  a  hint  and  an  explanation  of  the  devotion  with 
which  Chicago  men  regard  their  city.  By  their  un 
tamable  energy  they  have  built  her  up  from  a  heap  of 
ashes  in  their  own  lifetime  to  be  great  and  wealthy 
and  pulsing  with  virility.  The  gentleman  I  have 
quoted  would  be  honoured  and  loved  in  any  capital  of 
the  earth,  not  for  his  wealth  and  ability,  but  for  his 
sweet  and  even  saintly  character.  You  had  not  as 
sociated  saintliness  with  Chicago  ?  Probably  not. 
But  he  associates  everything  he  is  or  ever  has  been 
with  Chicago,  and  it  would  never  enter  into  his  mind 
for  an  instant  that  there  is  in  the  world  any  city 
where  he  would  be,  or  where  he  would  wish  to  be, 
more  in  place  than  in  Chicago.  He  has  grown  up 
with  her,  and  he  loves  her  like  a  mother. 

Therefore  the  men  of  Chicago  resolved  that  the 
twenty-fifth  anniversary  of  her  destruction  by  fire 
should  not  pass  without  such  a  demonstration  as 
should  convince  the  world  that  she  is  very  much  more 
alive  than  ever.  Incidentally,  it  was  determined  that 


CHICAGO  MAKES  AN   EFFORT.  187 

this  demonstration  should  also  blazon  abroad  her  de 
votion  to  the  cause  of  that  sound  money  on  which  she 
has  grown  to  be  what  she  is.  Now,  when  Chicago 
makes  up  her  mind  to  do  a  thing  she  does  it  as  it 
has  never  been  done  before.  If  it  is  not  the  biggest 
thing  of  its  kind  the  world  ever  saw  —  why,  then 
Chicago  has  lost  a  day.  The  American  people  love 
display  above  all  things  ;  it  is  nothing  to  be  anything 
unless  you  can  express  that  being  so  as  to  impress  it 
sensibly  upon  others.  So  the  day  was  made  a  public 
holiday,  not  by  the  decree  of  authority — what  cares 
Chicago  for  authority  ? — but  by  the  unanimous  resolve 
of  the  leading  citizens.  Board  of  Trade,  Stock  Ex 
change,  banks,  offices,  shops,  factories,  street  railways, 
all  took  a  day  off;  they  hardly  knew  themselves  in  the 
unaccustomed  calm.  Arid  Chicago  gathered  herself 
together  into  the  heart  of  the  city  for  a  festival  of 
superlative  display  such  as  had  never  been  seen  before, 
and  should  never  be  seen  again  until  Chicago  saw  fit 
to  surpass  it. 

I  had  seen  at  Canton  something  of  the  American 
method  of  electioneering, — of  the  appeal  to  the  senses 
of  the  voter,  hitting  him  hard  in  eye  and  ear  with 
colour  and  noise,  so  that  the  dullest  imagination  can 
not  fail  to  appreciate  the  strength  of  the  great  machine 
which  asks  him  to  become  part  of  it.  I  had  seen  in 
Chicago  evidences  of  ambitious  energy  which  con 
vinced  me  that  what  there  was  to  be  done  in  the  way 
of  colour  and  sound  and  pageantry  would  be  done 


188  THE   BIGGEST   PARADE  ON   EARTH. 

here.  But  I  had  also  seen  something  of  the  exagger* 
ation  into  which  American  impressionability  is  wont 
to  betray  itself.  When  I  went  to  the  office  of  the 
Chicago  'Times -Herald,'  which  was  my  hospitable 
home  for  the  day,  I  expected  to  see  a  big  thing — per 
haps  a  matter  of  two  or  three  hours — but  not  a  thing 
whose  bigness  would  transcend  my  powers  of  estimate 
and  comparison.  The  parade  was  timed  to  start  at 
ten,  and  only  a  few  minutes  afterwards  its  head 
appeared  between  the  dense  phalanxes  of  people 
crushed  on  to  the  pavements,  and  the  swarming  faces 
that  lined  every  building,  from  the  lowest  window  to 
the  roofs  and  chimneys,  like  ants  in  a  hill.  First 
came  a  squad  of  mounted  police;  then  mounted 
buglers ;  then  rank  on  rank  of  mounted  citizens. 
With  parti-coloured  sashes  slung  round  their  bodies, 
gold  cords  about  their  hats,  white  gauntlets,  new 
bridles,  and  brilliant  saddle-cloths,  they  looked  as 
disciplined  and  rode  as  regularly  as  the  police.  Pres 
ently  came  by  the  organiser  of  the  parade,  riding 
alone  like  a  general,  and  after  him  a  small  staff  and 
a  mounted  standard-bearer.  Then  slowly  there  ad 
vanced  a  colossal  American  ensign,  spread  out  like 
a  canopy  from  side  to  side  of  the  broad  street:  it 
seemed  to  be  rolling  along  by  its  own  motion.  It  was 
a  mass  of  umbrellas — some  blue  with  white  stars, 
others  red  and  white,  cunningly  marshalled  so  that 
from  above  they  presented  a  giant  counterfeit  of  the 
stars  and  stripes.  Then  came  the  demonstrators 


Or  THE 

UNIVERSITY 


189 

themselves.  First,  grey-bearded  veterans  of  the  war, 
glittering  with  medals  and  badges,  a  little  stiff  with 
years,  but  every  inch  of  them  soldiers  yet.  Band 
after  band  crashed  past  —  scarlet  and  blue,  crimson 
and  gold,  lace  and  feathers.  Between  them,  now 
eight  abreast  shoulder  to  shoulder,  now  four  abreast 
in  open  order  across  the  whole  street,  advanced  bat 
talion  after  battalion  of  marchers.  They  were  regi 
mented  either  according  to  political  clubs  or  to  the 
prominent  business  houses  of  Chicago  ;  each  carried 
its  own  standard.  The  great  drapery  establishment 
of  Marshall  Field  &  Company  led  the  way  —  six 
partners  of  the  firm  riding  abreast,  and  after  them 
shop-walkers,  salesmen,  cashiers,  porters,  office-boys, 
all  in  rank  and  file,  and  all  in  step  with  the  music. 
Firm  followed  firm,  club  followed  club.  Some  wore 
red  badges,  some  blue,  most  gold  ;  some  carried  scarlet 
umbrellas,  some  orange.  Others  wore  slouched  hats 
of  saffron  colour,  others  again  short  capes  of  ultra 
marine  or  vermilion.  All  kept  their  formation  and 
marched  in  step.  After  about  three-quarters  of  an 
hour,  when  the  procession  had  already  become  an 
army,  began  to  arrive  the  principal  attraction  of  the 
show  —  the  floats,  as  they  call  waggons  bearing  sym 
bols  of  trade  or  groups  of  allegorical  figures.  Here 
Vulcan  with  attendant  Cyclops,  here  nothing  but  a 
huge  earthen  pipe,  there  a  model  of  one  of  the  great 
buildings,  there  again  a  car  swarming  with  starred- 
and-  striped  Uncle  Sams  —  six  horses,  eight  horses, 


190  THE  BIGGEST   PARADE   ON   EARTH. 

ten  horses,  with  floating  streamers  and  gilded  hoofs. 
Horns  boomed  and  megaphone  speaking-trumpets 
magnified  the  din  tenfold.  And  at  intervals  along 
the  line  of  march  were  telephone  -  receivers  into 
which  enthusiasts  decanted  their  cheers,  to  be  carried 
five  hundred  miles  into  Mr  M'Kinley's  study  at  Can 
ton.  Was  there  ever  such  a  blend  of  the  infantile 
and  the  heroic? 

Eleven  o'clock :  they  were  still  stepping  briskly  out 
to  the  music.  Twelve  o'clock :  they  were  still  yelling 
"He's  all  right!"  as  they  passed  the  picture  of  M'Kin- 
ley.  One  o'clock:  they  were  just  getting  into  their 
stride.  At  half -past  one  I  took  a  short  adjournment 
and  not  unnecessary  sustenance.  At  half-past  two  I 
went  back  to  the  window :  there  was  this  inexhaust 
ible  parade  sweeping  on  as  doggedly  as  ever.  Club 
followed  club,  factory  trod  on  the  heels  of  factory. 
More  bands,  more  floats,  more  colours,  more  mega 
phones,  always  more  gold.  A  detachment  of  bakers 
in  white ;  a  company  of  glass  -  blowers  with  glass 
swords ;  a  troop  of  broom  -  makers  shouldering  gilt 
brooms.  Then  came  the  contingent  of  the  great 
packing  houses — ten  thousand  marchers  from  these 
alone.  Their  feature  was  the  stockyards  brigade,  all 
riding  and  all  in  capes  that  may  have  been  paper, 
but  looked  like  cloth -of -gold  —  hard  cattle-drovers 
and  slaughterers  sitting  their  fine  horses  carelessly. 
Every  ward  in  the  city,  every  trade  that  man  ever 
aet  his  hand  to,  had  sent  its  sons  to  swell  this  pro- 


STUNNING!  191 

digious  pageant.  Three  o'clock :  was  it  ever  going 
to  end  ?  We  had  long  ago  worked  through  the  list 
of  organisations  coloured  on  the  card,  yet  tramp,  tramp, 
rumble,  rumble,  crash,  crash,  the  men  and  the  wag 
gons  and  the  bands  came  pouring  on.  It  was  an  army 
corps,  two  army  corps,  a  whole  nation  on  the  march. 

At  last!  A  six-horsed  car  one  blaze  of  gold,  and 
the  crowd  had  broken  the  dam  and  was  surging  over 
the  street.  Twenty-five  minutes  to  four :  it  had  taken 
five  hours  and  ten  minutes  to  go  past  the  'Times- 
Herald  '  office.  By  my  own  estimate  nearly  four  hun 
dred  men  had  passed  every  minute;  allowing  for  all 
intervals  the  'Herald's'  calculation  of  eighteen  to 
twenty  thousand  an  hour  cannot  have  been  too  high. 
A  hundred  thousand  men  !  More  than  thirteen  miles 
of  procession !  Capitalist  worth  two  hundred  million 
dollars !  But  why  struggle  with  figures  so  vast  that 
they  have  lost  their  meaning.  The  parade  would 
have  failed  if  its  object,  if  its  import,  be  grasped  and 
weighed  by  figures.  The  mind  was  stunned  and  dead 
ened  by  the  vastness  of  it.  The  eye  was  blinded  with 
colour,  the  ear  deaf  with  music,  the  head  dazed  with 
the  effort  to  get  it  all  into  focus.  There  was  more 
colour  and  more  noise  and  more  men  than  you  could 
conceive  were  in  the  whole  world — a  world  of  brilliant 
bunting  and  brass  and  horses,  and  moving  men,  men, 
men,  till  you  gave  up  and  let  it  sweep  over  you  and 
conquer  you  and  absorb  you,  annihilated  into  its 
titanic  self. 


192  THE   BIGGEST   PARADE   ON   EAETH. 

"  If  M'Kinley  gets  all  that  of  votes  out  of  this 
county,"  said  the  lift  -  boy  when  I  crawled  home, 
feeling  too  small  a  worm  ever  to  turn  again,  "  he'll 
be  our  next  President  sure."  There  you  see  it  at 
work.  That  lift-boy  never  went  to  a  political  meet 
ing,  never  read  a  political  tract.  They  have  dis 
covered  in  this  country  the  effects  of  the  spectacular 
and  the  auricular,  and  they  have  applied  it  on  a 
characteristically  vast  scale.  You  can  disregard  ar 
gument  ;  you  can  ignore  self-interest ;  you  can  for 
get  country ;  you  can  even  refuse  a  bribe.  But  you 
cannot  fail  to  see  and  hear  and  to  be  struck  wellnigh 
resistless  by  so  imperious  and  masterful  appeal  to 
the  senses  of  your  body. 

The  Democrats  know  that  as  well  as  anybody  else. 
So  they  have  organised  a  counter -demonstration  as 
colossal  as  they  can  lay  their  hands  on  for  the  even 
ing,  and  as  I  write  it  is  trooping  up  beneath  my 
window.  On  the  horizon  the  red  and  white  lights 
shine  steadily  over  the  black  solemnity  of  the  Lake. 
Nearer  in  is  the  broad  belt  of  muddy  waste  that 
Chicago  is  going  to  make  into  a  park  when  the 
City  Council  gives  back  the  money  it  has  embez 
zled.  And  right  below  us  is  Michigan  Avenue,  dark 
with  heaving  masses  of  men,  flickering  with  gold 
and  silver  and  red  fire,  and  volleying  cheers,  hoarse 
and  shrill,  far  over  the  solemn  water,  and  up  to 
unanswering  heaven.  All  poor  men  these.  No  two 
hundred  million  dollars  here.  Not  but  what  they 


THE   POOR  MAN'S   PARADE.  193 

know  how  to  play  the  game  as  well  as  anybody. 
They  have  the  advantage  of  the  darkness  and  illu 
mination,  and  the  keen  night  breeze.  They  have  a 
row  of  sheeted  ghosts  with  such  boding  inscriptions 
as  "  Murdered  in  Pennsylvania  by  Carnegie."  It 
seems  to  me — I  may  be  wrong,  I  am  trying  to  be 
fair — that  there  is  more  life,  more  sincerity,  more 
devil  in  this  muster  than  in  the  other.  Men  said 
that  factory  hands  were  compelled  to  demonstrate 
this  morning  for  fear  of  their  employers.  It  was 
untrue  of  many  thousands,  I  doubt  not;  yet  some 
looked  sullen  —  it  may  probably  have  been  true  of 
some.  But  of  this  night's  enthusiasm  there  can  be  no 
doubt;  the  affair  goes  in  a  whirlwind  of  cheers  from 
start  to  finish.  It  may  be  smaller,  though  even  this 
is  a  great  army ;  it  takes  an  hour  and  a  half  to  pass 
my  window,  and  cannot  number  less  than  thirty 
thousand  men.  And  if  smaller,  it  is  more  exuberant. 
It  may  be  less  overwhelming,  but  it  is  more  inspirit 
ing.  I  am  getting  enthusiastic  myself.  There  may 
be  fewer  bands,  but  how  they  ring !  and  was  there 
ever  an  air  like  "  Auld  Lang  Syne  "  ?  There  may  be 
fewer  cavalry,  but  how  they  step !  and  was  ever  any 
created  thing  so  beautiful  as  a  horse  ?  There  may  be 
less  colour,  but  how  the  torches  dance !  There  may 
be  fewer  cars,  but  how  the  silver  blazes  in  the  eye  of 
the  calcium  lights !  So  they  go  blaring  and  flaring, 
tossing  and  roaring  and  maddening  into  the  darkness. 
All  poor  men,  in  this  city  of  corn  and  meat  and 

N 


194  THE  BIGGEST   PARADE   ON    EARTH. 

dollars.  May  be  coarse  men  and  ignorant  men.  They 
may  be  very  wrong ;  they  may  be  compassing  their 
country's  ruin  and  their  own.  But  they  all  feel  that 
there  is  something  they  want — something  they  ought 
to  have  and  have  not — and  in  a  vague,  blind  way 
they  are  striving  to  get  it.  Thousands  of  them  think 
—how  tragically ! — that  it  is  within  their  grasp  to 
day.  All  poor  men  —  and  poor  they  will  remair 
Sometimes  dully  patient  through  the  night  of  indi 
gence ;  sometimes  shouting  at  the  phantom  of  false 
morning;  sometimes,  it  may  be,  raving  and  seeing 
red  But  poor  they  will  remain. 


195 


XXII. 

OUT     WEST. 

DBNTOR,  October  12. 

I  AWOKE  yesterday  morning  to  find  the  train  rumbling 
alongside  a  broad  coffee-coloured  river  which  threaded 
its  way  among  long  coffee-coloured  shoals  and  sandy 
eyots.  It  was  the  Missouri,  and  when  presently  we 
creaked  over  it  I  was  in  the  West  indeed. 

All  Sunday  the  train  rolled  across  the  plains  of 
Kansas,  —  for  an  American  train,  being  a  string  of 
very  long  and  heavy  carriages,  does  roll  instead  of 
jumping  like  so  many  of  ours:  it  is  the  difference 
between  the  movement  of  the  ocean-liner  and  of  the 
row-boat.  The  plains  of  Kansas  are  not  an  interest 
ing  spectacle  after  the  first  half-dozen  hours  or  so. 
Once  the  bed  of  an  inland  sea,  their  long  rise  and 
fall  affords  at  one  moment  a  prospect  of  miles,  the 
next  of  a  few  hundred  yards.  But  miles  or  yards,  it 
is  all  the  same — dim  brown-green  fields,  mostly  divided 
by  wire  fences,  but  now  and  again  by  a  grove  of  yel 
lowing  half -naked  trees  or  a  tall  straggling  hedge.  At 


196  OUT  WEST. 

intervals  the  black  skeleton  of  a  little  coal-mine 
varies,  but  hardly  embellishes,  the  prospect.  Farm 
houses,  of  the  portable  frame-built  kind,  are  dotted 
here  and  there.  In  the  middle  of  the  enormous 
fields  they  look  curiously  like  toys.  About  them  are 
a  few  head  of  cattle  or  horses  to  be  seen,  but  most 
of  the  land  is  plough.  The  rich  black  loam  grows 
fine  crops  of  maize  and  wheat,  when  only  it  will 
remember  to  rain.  Kansas  is  the  first  wheat-growing 
State  of  the  Union ;  the  fourth  in  oats,  and  the  fifth 
in  Indian  corn.  This  year  it  has  rained  rather  too 
much  than  otherwise,  but  a  little  excess  is  preferable 
to  the  ruinous  droughts  of  the  preceding  years.  So 
that,  with  a  good  harvest  and  wheat  bounding  up  on 
the  Chicago  market,  Kansas  has  done  well. 

But  Kansas  is  not  happy.  From  the  conversation 
of  its  various  sons  who  joined  us  and  left  us  during 
the  long  Sunday,  I  gathered  that  Kansas  is  convinced 
that  there  is  something  somewhere  in  the  universe 
that  is  radically  wrong.  She  was  over -boomed  in 
the  early  '80's  like  all  the  West,  and  to-day  she  is 
paying — or,  more  correctly,  owing — for  it.  Vast  sums 
were  borrowed  to  put  up  houses  that  nobody  wanted, 
and  to  till  land  that  had  better  have  been  left  virgin. 
So  that  when  India  suddenly  took  to  producing  wheat 
in  hundreds  of  millions  of  bushels,  and  Australia  and 
the  Argentine  in  tens  of  millions,  and  when  the  price 
went  steadily  down  in  consequence,  Kansas  began  to 
feel  that  all  was  not  as  it  should  be. 


THE   SORROWS   OF   KANSAS.  197 

Then  came  the  awful  fact  that  the  rainfall  was  such 
that  every  other  drop  failed  utterly.  Kansas  was  the 
more  convinced  that  something  was  rotten.  To  put 
it  right  —  instead  of  irrigating,  which  with  time  is 
the  main  hope  of  the  West — she  set  to  work  fever 
ishly  upon  all  kinds  of  curious  political  experiments. 
An  American  asked  me  a  few  days  ago  whether  we 
did  not  feel  it  very  inconvenient  to  have  to  make 
any  experiment  in  government  by  the  unwieldy  means 
of  an  Act  of  Parliament:  was  it  not  far  easier  and 
safer  to  let  individual  States  make  trial  of  a  novelty 
and  see  how  it  worked  ?  No  doubt  an  awful  example 
is  at  times  convenient  to  all  of  us,  but  how  about  the 
example  ?  Kansas  has  been  the  drunken  helot  of 
American  politics.  "  Here's  a  law ;  let's  enact  it," 
has  been  its  continual  watchword.  Kansas  tried 
Prohibition,  and,  if  it  is  any  satisfaction  to  it  to 
know,  thereby  put  me  to  some  inconvenience.  But 
the  native  Kansan  still  knows  where  to  get  drunk 
if  he  wants  to,  and  cutting  off  the  supply  of  whisky 
on  earth  did  nothing  to  increase  the  fall  of  water 
from  heaven.  It  tried  a  certain  amount  of  female 
suffrage  with  no  more  effect.  In  the  last  few  years 
it  has  given  its  allegiance  to  four  new  political 
parties.  These  were  the  Farmers'  Alliance,  the 
National  Alliance,  the  People's  Party,  and  the 
Silver  Party.  None  of  them  did  any  good,  and  now 
for  what  none  of  her  politics  could  do  Kansas  has  to 
own  her  obligation  to  the  despised  laws  of  supply 


198  OUT   WEST. 

and  demand.  But  this  election  is  too  early  for 
Kansas  to  own  any  such  thing.  She  is  saturated 
with  the  doctrine  of  free  silver.  The  towns,  Re 
publicans  told  me,  will  go  handsomely  for  M'Kinley, 
but  then  there  are  no  towns.  The  outlying  farmer  is 
largely  beyond  the  reach  of  the  campaign  of  education 
which  the  gold  men  are  conducting,  and  though  Kansas 
is  being  rapidly  purged  of  economic  heresy,  there  will 
be  enough  left  to  ensure  a  victory  for  Mr  Bryan. 
Small  blame  to  Kansas  for  desiring  any  change,  since 
with  crops  failing,  prices  tumbling,  and  mortgages 
foreclosing,  her  lot  has  been  one  of  hard  anxiety. 

Next  morning  we  were  in  Colorado.  The  sleepers 
were  white  with  frost,  but  the  sun  was  half  a  furnace 
at  six  in  the  morning,  and  the  sky  was  all  blue.  We 
were  rolling,  rolling  now  across  the  raw  prairie.  Wave 
after  wave  it  spread  out  boundlessly  on  every  side,  a 
pale  silvery  grey  under  the  frost  and  the  dazzling  sun 
shine.  No  room  for  agriculture  here.  Seen  in  the 
bulk  the  prairie  is  much  like  a  smooth,  undulating 
sea;  but  if  you  look  closer  it  is  more  like  a  glacier 
— a  glacier  of  caked  sand,  wrinkled  with  a  thousand 
crevasses  in  which  streams  should  run,  but  which 
only  rarely  contain  so  much  as  a  little  ooze.  The 
surface  is  dappled  with  tufts  of  sage- scrub — small 
bushes  that  at  a  distance  resemble  bleached  heather. 
Occasionally  appeared  sparse  blades  of  coarse  grass, 
but  the  rare  steers  and  horses  had  a  right  to  be  thin. 
Nothing  flourishes  in  this  arid  wilderness  except 


DENVER.  199 

prairie-dogs.  Hundreds  of  these  brown-furred  little 
devils,  a  mixture  of  rabbit  and  guinea  -  pig,  were 
scampering  up  and  down  in  the  sun,  or  perking  them 
selves  bolt  upright  at  the  edge  of  their  holes,  comically 
like  a  dog  begging,  to  look  at  the  train  as  it  rolled 
past  them.  Presently  in  the  distance  the  ground 
began  to  rise  into  hills,  and  then  the  hills  into  moun 
tains.  We  did  not  climb  them,  but  turned  northward 
and  ran  through  country  where  the  grey  of  the  prairie 
began  to  be  relieved  with  the  yellow  of  deciduous 
trees,  and  a  green  field  or  so  of  clover.  So  we  ran 
into  Denver,  the  mining  capital  of  the  West,  the  Queen 
City  of  the  Plains. 

The  Queen  City  of  the  Plains,  if  I  may  presume  to 
criticise  on  a  very  brief  acquaintance,  is  more  plain 
than  queenly.  A  very  well-made,  well-arranged  city 
beyond  doubt,  but  undistinguished.  Solid  brick-built 
houses,  neither  too  large  nor  too  small,  she  has  in  the 
central  part,  and  agreeable  residences.  Her  tram-car 
system  and  electric-lighting  system  are  not  to  be  im 
peached.  In  one  respect  I  noticed  Denver  has  risen 
superior  to  American  carelessness.  Many  cities  are 
apt  in  places  to  leave  the  names  or  numbers  of  their 
streets  to  be  remembered  by  the  inhabitant,  or  con 
structed  out  of  the  inner  consciousness.  Denver  puts 
a  couple  of  boards  at  each  street  corner,  with  not  only 
the  names  but  also  some  of  the  more  important  or 
necessary  businesses  between  that  corner  and  the 
next.  But,  alas  !  even  Denver  is  human,  for  many  of 


200  OUT   WEST. 

the  corners  have  indeed  the  brackets  for  such  boards, 
but  no  trace  of  boards  for  the  brackets.  The  inhabit 
ants  appear,  at  first  sight,  to  gain  a  precarious  liveli 
hood  by  selling  each  other  railway  tickets  at  reduced 
rates.  Outward  from  the  business  centre  Denver  is 
much  the  same  as  other  American  cities.  Perhaps  a 
little  more  beautiful  than  Chicago,  in  that  the  subur 
ban  roads  are  oftener  planted  with  trees;  perhaps  a 
little  less  so,  in  that  the  acres  of  railroad  track  and 
factory  in  smaller  Denver  are  less  diluted  by  dwelling- 
houses.  Much  the  same,  in  that  the  outskirts  of  both 
are  dingy  and  dusty  and  sooty,  and  largely  over- 
populated  with  Germans. 

But  if  Chicago  has  her  lake  to  redeem  her,  Denver 
has  her  mountains.  No  city  can  be  wholly  unpleasing 
where  you  can  look  up  from  a  street  of  railway  ticket- 
offices  and  mining  agencies  to  see  a  great  mountain 
filling  the  end  of  the  vista.  It  has  been  remarked  by 
some  profound  observer  that  the  spectacle  of  high 
mountains  suggests  majestic  calm.  It  does.  But  how 
majestically  calm  mountains  can  look  I  never  knew 
till  I  saw  the  Kockies  from  the  Argo  Smelting  Works. 
On  one  side  a  maze  of  railway  lines  and  row  on  row 
of  freight  -  trucks  formed  the  foreground.  Behind 
them  was  a  large,  low  parallelogram  of  dingy  brick 
and  unpainted  wood  and  dull  slate ;  out  of  it  rose 
more  than  a  dozen  fat  chimneys,  vomiting  clouds  of 
impenetrable  blackness.  The  sun  was  smeared  with 
the  dirtiness  of  it ;  the  air  was  poisoned  with  the 


THE  ROCKIES  AND  THE  SMELTER.       201 

reek  of  it,  and  throbbed  with  the  pulse  of  machinery. 
On  the  other  side  rose  the  Eocky  Mountains.  In 
front  were  the  naked  brown  sides  of  the  lower  eleva 
tions — harsh  in  colour  and  savage  in  outline.  Behind 
them  towered  summits  fading  from  brown  to  a  more 
kindly  grey,  and  beginning  to  blend  the  wildness  of 
their  shape  with  the  clouds.  And  yet  further  rose 
the  white  peaks  above  the  clouds,  basking  serene 
and  unperturbed  in  the  glory  of  their  neighbour, 
the  sun.  "In  the  world  there  is  nothing  great  but 
man,"  I  repeated  with  my  face  to  the  factory,  and 
then  looked  at  the  mountains.  They  did  not  trouble 
to  rebuke  me.  What  is  the  smelter  to  them  ?  They 
looked  down  on  that  table-land  without  interest  when 
the  smelter  was  born,  and  they  will  look  down  without 
condescending  to  triumph  when  it  dies. 

Why  did  I  plough  through  sand  and  Germans  to 
the  Argo  Smelter  ?  I  haven't  an  idea,  unless  it  was 
the  weird  of  the  conscientious  journalist,  which  never 
lets  him  get  away  from  what  he  cannot  understand. 
There  was  next  to  no  work  going,  and  nearly  all  the 
plant  was  still  and  cold.  It  was  even  pathetic  to  see 
the  sparse  workmen  strolling  about  the  great  sheds 
built  to  keep  twenty  times  their  number  busy.  But 
I  saw  them  crushing  silver  ore,  and  it  was  about  the 
grimmest  industrial  operation  there  could  be.  No 
delicacy  of  contrivance  or  sheen  of  racing  steel,  but 
heavy  grimy  machinery,  crushing  the  blocks  of 
metallic  rock  by  sheer  brute  force.  Then  I  saw  the 


202  OUT  WEST. 

powder  being  raked  to  and  fro  in  a  square  furnace, 
and  being  raked  round  and  round  in  a  circular  furnace. 
Finally  it  comes  out,  as  I  understood,  in  a  form  in 
which  it  can  be  dissolved  in  hot  water  and  thence 
precipitated  as  pure  metal.  At  this  point  I  saw 
some  rubble  in  a  wooden  box,  and  turned  to  ask  a 
workman  whether  any  use  could  be  made  of  it.  He 
said  it  could;  that  was  the  silver.  That  the  silver 
— that  dirty -white  crumbling  mess;  half  dust,  half 
coagulated  like  frozen  snow !  That  was  it :  there 
was  about  200  ounces  of  it,  he  said,  strewn  about 
the  box,  and  that  was  the  crushings  of  over  ten  tons 
of  ore.  And  was  that  the  stuff  that  all  this  herculean 
and  vulcanic  machinery  had  been  tearing  its  heart  out 
and  burning  its  ribs  through  to  force  from  the  rock  ? 
That  the  stuff  that  is  shaking  this  whole  country 
as  it  has  hardly  been  shaken  before?  Away,  vile 
dross ! 

But  that  is  not  the  view  of  Denver.  Denver  is 
the  centre  to  which  comes  for  smelting  the  gold  and 
the  silver,  the  copper  and  lead,  and  the  other  metals 
which  are  woven  into  all  the  mountains  of  Colorado. 
Colorado  calls  herself  the  Silver  State,  and  of  right, 
for  she  puts  out  more  than  one-seventh  of  the  whole 
production  of  the  world.  But  silver  is  not  what  it 
was.  In  the  last  three  years  it  has  gone  down  nearly 
50  per  cent.  What  was  paying  ore  then  is  now  only 
fit  for  the  dump-heap.  "  Talk  of  silver  barons,"  said 
a  mining  engineer ;  "  you  could  count  them  nowadays 


"A  BEAUTIFUL  BUSINESS  ONCE."  203 

on  the  fingers  of  your  two  hands.  I  don't  suppose 
there  are  half-a-dozen  silver-mines  now  running,  bar 
those  that  produce  gold  as  well.  It  was  a  beautiful 
business  once.  But  now  you  can't  be  surprised  if 
people  that  are  in  want  cry  out  for  some  change, 
even  if  it  is  not  quite  sound  economically."  I  told 
him  I  was  not  surprised — the  less  so  since  I  per 
ceived  that  he  meant  to  vote  for  free  coinage  at  16 
to  1  himself.  So  will  they  all  in  Colorado.  Who  can 
blame  them  I 


204 


XXIII. 

A    STRIKE. 

LEADVILLE,  October  18. 

EVERY  American  is  at  heart  an  Anarchist.  He  hates 
constraint,  he  hates  regulation,  he  hates  law.  The 
most  elementary  arrangements  of  an  ordered  com 
munity,  as  we  should  think,  are  to  him  irksome  and 
intolerable  encroachments  on  his  liberty.  But  there 
is  one  point  on  which  the  conservatism  of  America 
would  put  the  very  Czar  to  shame.  The  American 
will  tolerate  much,  but  he  will  have  no  tampering 
with  the  rights  of  property.  He  may  have  nothing 
himself,  but  he  will  guard  the  havings  of  others  with 
all  the  jealousy  a  man  usually  gives  only  to  his  own. 
In  a  land  where  you  may  be  a  pauper  to-day  and  a 
millionaire  to-morrow ;  where  it  is  the  commonest 
experience  to  meet  a  man  who  has  made,  and  lost, 
half-a-dozen  fortunes  in  half-a-dozen  different  pro 
fessions  in  as  many  years — here  a  man  looks  upon 
the  wealth  of  others  as  held  in  trust  for  himself,  and 
will  suffer  no  diminution  of  its  sanctity.  Socialism, 


THE  THREE  BOOMS  OF  LEADVILLE.      205 

Anarchism,  any  "  ism "  that  smacks  of  confiscation 
or  nationalisation,  is  a  far  more  heinous  horror  in  this 
land  of  democracy  than  anywhere  in  the  king-ridden 
East. 

It  is  so  with  strikes.  In  our  own  country  a  strike, 
even  if  the  strikers  be  palpably  in  the  wrong,  will  al 
ways  command  the  sympathy  of  a  great  many  people. 
Except  in  extreme  cases,  I  am  free  to  own  that  it 
automatically  commands  mine.  In  this  country  it 
does  nothing  of  the  kind.  Hardly  a  word  have  I 
heard  in  apology  for  the  Leadville  strikers  from  any 
person  I  have  come  across.  Everybody  reprobates 
them  mercilessly  ;  everybody  exults  over  the  measures 
that  now  appear  to  be  ensuring  their  defeat  and 
ruin. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  theirs  is  a  pretty  bad 
case.  Leadville,  you  must  know,  is  a  mining  camp 
right  up  above  the  clouds  in  the  Kocky  Mountains. 
It  is  so  called  because  it  produces  lead,  but  its  first 
real  boom  was  in  gold.  When  the  gold  was  to  some 
extent  played  out,  two  drunken  miners,  acting  under 
the  divine  inspiration  of  their  condition,  set  to  digging 
one  night  in  a  place  where  no  sane  man  would  have 
swung  a  pick.  Of  course  they  discovered  carbonates 
soaked  in  silver  beyond  the  dreams  of  avarice.  There 
upon  Leadville  had  a  second  boom.  That  was  about 
eighteen  years  back ;  in  the  meantime  the  camp  had 
developed  resources  in  the  way  of  iron  and  copper 
also.  About  half-a-dozen  years  ago  it  had  a  third 


206  A  STRIKE. 

boom — this  time  in  gold  again.  Leadville,  in  short, 
appeared  singularly  blessed  of  Heaven.  The  depres 
sion  which  had  menaced  our  fair  city,  as  the  preface 
to  the  local  directory  finely  remarks,  faded  away,  and 
the  sun  of  prosperity  spread  its  invigorating  beams 
around. 

But  within  a  few  months  of  these  words  came  the 
strike.  Silver  had  gone  down  steadily,  until  Lead 
ville  could  afford  to  work  hardly  an  ounce  of  it. 
Thereon  it  seems  that  the  Miners'  Trade  Union  seized 
the  auspicious  occasion  to  demand  a  rise  in  wages. 
About  two-thirds  of  the  men  got  three  dollars  a-day, 
and  the  rest  two  and  a  half.  Three  pounds  a- week 
you  would  have  called  good  enough  wages  in  bad 
times,  even  though  prices  are  somewhat  higher  in  a 
mining  camp  eleven  thousand  feet  above  sea -level, 
where  your  heart  bangs  on  your  ribs  if  you  run  up 
stairs,  than  in  the  cities  of  the  plain.  But  the  mine 
managers,  though  they  promised  the  rise  when  silver 
went  up  to  70  cents  (I  think  it  was)  an  ounce,  set 
their  faces  resolutely  against  any  increase  at  the  time. 

The  real  question  appears  to  have  been  whether 
the  Colorado  miners  should  come  under  the  Western 
Union,  like  those  of  Montana  and  Idaho,  or  whether 
this  should  remain  a  non-Union  State.  The  men 
struck;  the  managers  got  in  blacklegs.  Then  one 
night,  some  five  weeks  ago,  two  of  the  mines  were 
attacked.  One  was  set  on  fire  and  wrecked ;  the 
other,  though  the  strikers  used  dynamite  freely,  was 


STRIKE  Oil  PUBLIC   HOLIDAY?  207 

pluckily  defended.  The  assailants  were  driven  off. 
Nobody  knows — or  cares,  apparently  —  exactly  how 
many  men  they  lost.  The  leaders  of  the  Union  were 
thereon  charged  with  murder,  and  thrown  into  prison, 
where  they  now  are.  The  President  of  the  Union 
has  utterly  disappeared  from  the  face  of  the  earth— 
whether  he  was  shot  in  the  attack  on  the  mine  or  is 
now  a  fugitive  from  justice,  again  nobody  knows  or 
cares.  Leadville  was  occupied  by  troops  in  force, 
infantry  and  cavalry,  a  12-pounder  and  gatlings,  and 
is  so  occupied  at  this  day. 

The  camp  presents  a  strange  contrast  to-day  be 
tween  black  hostility  and  Western  good-fellowship. 
The  whole  company  of  the  strikers  was  lounging 
along  the  main  street,  well  dressed  and  well  fed  to 
all  appearance,  and  in  perfect  good-humour,  as  if  the 
men  in  their  graves  with  bullets  through  their  hearts 
had  been  sharing  the  sunshine  with  them.  It  all 
looked  more  like  a  holiday  than  a  strike.  Presently 
three  fire-engines,  each  fireman  in  a  different  uniform, 
came  galloping  down  the  ploughed  field  that  forms 
the  central  avenue  of  Leadville.  Everybody  followed 
—without  excitement,  of  course,  for  what  is  a  mere 
fire  in  Leadville  ? — but  with  an  evident  intention  to 
make  the  most  of  a  lucky  windfall  in  the  way  of 
entertainment.  The  truth  was  that  the  Governor 
of  Colorado  had  come  up  to  inspect  the  military 
arrangements,  and  the  firemen  had  been  turned  out 
to  amuse  him.  The  public  disappointment  was  my 


208  A   STRIKE. 

gain,  for  I  had  an  opportunity  of  seeing  the  forti 
fications  of  Leadville. 

Not  knowing  a  soul  in  the  place,  I  had  followed 
my  usual  method  of  calling  upon  the  leading  news 
paper.  The  invariable  result  followed — first,  that  I 
was  interviewed ;  and,  secondly,  that  I  received  the 
honorary  freedom  of  the  town.  And  for  social  life — 
except  on  dynamite  nights — give  me  Leadville.  Be 
fore  the  huge  fire  in  the  hall  of  the  hotel  was  the 
whole  camp — the  mine  manager  dressed  for  all  the 
world  like  one  of  the  strikers,  the  local  editor  in 
corduroy  trousers,  the  officers  of  the  army  of  occupa 
tion  in  their  workmanlike  blue  uniforms,  the  Governor 
of  the  State  being  introduced  to  the  postman.  Into 
this  order  of  equality  and  friendliness  I  was  initiated, 
and  the  officers  hospitably  asked  me  to  join  them  as 
part  of  the  Governor's  escort.  So  I  hired  a  mustang, 
or  burro,  or  broncho,  or  whatever  it  was — to  me  it 
looked  just  like  a  plain  horse,  and  on  the  whole  it 
behaved  as  such — fell  in  behind  the  staff-officers,  and 
rode  off  to  inspect  the  camp. 

If  anybody  is  apt  to  think  little  of  the  United 
States  militia  by  reason  of  the  everyday  looseness  of  its 
equipment  and  the  apparent  easiness  of  its  discipline, 
he  is  in  a  fair  way  to  be  badly  surprised  some  day. 
I  know  nothing  of  military  affairs,  but  it  was  im 
possible  for  the  greenest  greenhorn  to  see  these  men 
without  recognising  them  as  the  real  stuff  that  wins 
battles.  Spare  and  active,  hard  as  nails,  with  intelli 


A   FORTIFIED   MINE.  209 

gence  and  determination  stamped  on  every  face,  on 
the  best  of  terms  with  their  officers  and  each  other, 
they  were  quite  plainly  the  men  for  days  of  forced 
marching  with  straight  shooting  at  the  end  of  it,  and 
shooting  right  on  to  a  finish.  Up  here  in  the  clouds 
with  spells  of  four  hours'  sentry-go  in  the  icy  nights, 
with  no  air  to  breathe,  the  senior  surgeon  told  me  that 
he  had  only  found  half-a-dozen  men  unfit  for  duty  in 
almost  as  many  weeks. 

Then  we  rode  up  to  the  mines.  The  first  was  a 
shapeless  chaos  of  charred  beams,  broken  metal,  over 
turned  cylinders,  wires  strewn  underfoot,  machinery 
hanging  in  blackened  shreds.  Here  the  storming 
party  had  succeeded  in  dynamiting  their  way  in  and 
firing  an  oil-tank.  The  next  mine  was  a  fortress, 
nothing  less.  Eamparts  of  rubble,  stout  abattis,  pent 
houses  of  heavy  beams— the  place  looked  impregnable 
to  anything  but  artillery  or  dynamite.  Here,  too,  the 
defences  had  been  broken  through  by  bombs,  but  a 
fierce  fight  followed  round  the  oil -tank,  and  the 
strikers  were  beaten  off.  The  chimneys  of  the  works 
were  like  sieves  with  bullet  -  holes,  and  there  were 
deep  and  frequent  dints  in  the  woodwork.  In  this 
mine  we  saw  the  double  row  of  roughly-sawn  plank- 
built  bunks  where  the  men  sleep,  and  the  long  table 
laid  out  for  them  to  eat  on :  they  only  leave  the 
precinct  of  the  mine  at  the  risk  of  their  lives.  We 
saw  the  pickets  on  guard  and  the  garrison  drawn 
up  inside  the  fort.  The  soldiers  were  only  doing  their 

0 


210  A   STRIKE. 

duty,  quietly  and  loyally,  as  they  are  bound  to  do. 
But  here  also  were  the  imported  non-unionist  miners, 
prisoners  in  their  workshop,  earning  a  living  in  deadly 
peril  every  minute  of  the  day  and  night.  It  was  not 
wonderful  that  they  showed  something  of  the  fierce 
ness  of  the  wild  beast  when  it  has  tasted  blood ;  that 
one  or  two  of  them  exulted  in  the  slaughter  they  had 
done  already,  and  asked  no  better  than  to  have  a 
chance  of  killing  again.  Whether  such  a  chance  will 
be  given  them  nobody  can  tell.  The  town  is  as 
orderly  as  a  Sunday-school  to-day ;  but  the  sullen 
calm  may  be  furious  storm  to-morrow.  And  there 
is  always  dynamite.  At  the  third  mine — a  Samson 
of  pumping  and  hoisting  machinery  —  the  hills  of 
rubble  had  been  made  into  escarpments  and  bastions, 
with  a  system  of  block -houses  and  electric  lights 
placed  so  as  to  command  every  approach.  It  would 
be  so  easy  to  steal  up  with  dynamite.  If  you  approach 
you  will  be  fired  on  ;  briefly,  Leadville  is  in  a  state  of 
siege,  not  to  say  civil  war.  Several  hundred  stand  of 
arms  have  been  confiscated,  but  signals  have  been  seen 
flashing  from  mountain  to  mountain  at  night,  and 
little  caches  of  dynamite  have  been  found  near  the 
mines.  "There  may  be  one  under  our  feet  at  this 
moment,"  suggested  an  officer,  cheerfully. 

We  scrambled  up  and  down  the  stony  steeps  from 
mine  to  mine  for  good  part  of  the  afternoon.  Trotting 
back  past  the  little  frame-huts,  I  saw  more  than  one 
black-browed  miner  lowering  at  his  door,  and  more 


TO  THE  DEATH.  211 

than  one  muttering  woman  calling  off  her  children  as 
we  passed.  In  this  grim  deadlock  Leadville  waits  for 
the  cruel  winter.  With  uncalculated  treasures  be 
neath  her  feet,  and  the  clammy,  cold  clouds  pressing 
down  on  her  head,  she  waits  for  aching  frost  and 
hunger  to  settle  the  matter  one  way,  or  cold  steel 
and  hot  lead  and  dynamite  to  settle  it  the  other.  No 
surrender ;  no  compromise ;  no  pity.  The  owners 
mean  to  starve  the  miners  to  death ;  the  miners  mean 
to  blow  the  owners  to  atoms.  It  is  not  the  first 
strike  of  the  kind  in  America,  nor  the  second,  nor 
will  it  be  the  last.  And  as  a  dark  menace  for  the 
future  a  billion  silver  questions  are  not  to  be  named 
in  the  same  breath  with  ifc» 


212 


XXIV. 

AMONG    THE   MORMONS. 

SALT  LAKE  CITY,  October  16. 

*  Bur  Brigham  Young  was  a  big  man  ? "  I  expostu 
lated. 

"He  was  a  natural  boss/'  said  the  Judge,  "but 
not  near  so  big  a  man  as  his  people  made  out.  He 
pretended  to  receive  telephone  messages  from  the 
Almighty,  and  they  did  what  he  told  them  every 
time.  But  he  was  a  bully  and  a  braggart;  he 
hadn't  any  real  courage.  He  was  not  a  Mahomet, 
sir." 

"But  he  did  a  lot  here." 

"  He  had  a  lot  of  men  working.  It  looks  wonder 
ful  to  make  a  garden  out  of  a  desert;  but  it  was 
the  water  did  it.  A  tribe  of  civilised  Indians  down 
in  New  Mexico  had  done  it  before,  and  the  Spaniards 
had  always  irrigated.  I  guess  you  won't  find  any 
thing  here  in  the  way  of  irrigation  they  haven't  got 
in  Egypt.  And  you  can  water  this  land  in  a  year; 


MORMONISM:   BIKTH   AND   DEATH.  213 

back  East  it  took  a  man  a  lifetime  to  clear  his  patch 
of  forest." 

That  was  the  view  of  a  man  who  had  fought  Mor- 
monism  for  twenty  years  and  had  beaten  it.  For 
Mormonism  is  beaten  to-day ;  as  an  organisation  of 
life  apart  from  the  Gentile  world  Mormonism  is  quite 
dead.  The  white  six-spired  temple,  which  took  forty 
years  to  build,  with  walls  nine  feet  thick,  and  every 
corner  wrought  out  of  a  single  stone,  is  no  more  than 
its  mausoleum. 

From  the  first  emigration  in  1847,  when  Salt  Lake 
City  was  the  only  bit  of  civilisation  West  of  the 
Missouri,  and  wellnigh  as  hermetically  sealed  from 
the  outer  world  as  was  America  before  Columbus, 
there  were  Gentiles  in  Utah.  They  were  tolerated, 
but  no  more.  But  in  1868  came  the  Union  Pacific, 
and  the  huge  bell  that  tolled  from  its  engines  was 
the  death-knell  of  Mormonism  as  Church  and  State 
in  one.  The  Gentiles  increased :  year  by  year  there 
were  contests  for  local  offices,  and  though  the  People's 
Party — as  the  Mormons  called  themselves — always 
had  the  victory,  the  minority  of  the  Liberals,  or 
Gentiles,  grew  steadily  smaller.  At  last,  in  1889, 
came  a  State  election  in  which  the  Mormons  won 
the  State,  or  the  territory  as  it  then  was,  but  in  Salt 
Lake  City  itself  were  in  a  minority  of  41.  Next 
spring  was  fought  the  hottest  municipal  contest 
American  politics  ever  saw.  Every  man  in  the  city 
was  working  on  one  side  or  the  other.  The  Liberals 


214  AMONG   THE    MORMONS. 

carried  their  ticket  by  700  votes,  and  the  Mormon 
game  was  up.  They  disbanded  their  party ;  two 
years  later  the  Liberal  party  was  similarly  called 
together  and  disbanded.  Utah  divided  itself  into 
Republicans  and  Democrats  like  the  rest  of  America. 
Mormonism  abandoned  its  claim  to  identify  Church 
with  State.  It  gave  up  polygamy.  The  revelation 
from  Christ  and  Brigham  Young  suspending  it  was 
hastened,  say  certain  Gentiles,  by  the  imminent  pas 
sage  of  a  bill  disfranchising  the  husband  of  many 
wives.  The  sharp  line  between  saint  and  sinner  was 
rubbed  out,  and  Mormonism  became  a  mere  sect  like 
any  other. 

I  thought  I  should  like  to  have  a  Mormon  view 
of  the  matter.  So  the  Secretary  of  the  Chamber  of 
Commerce  obligingly  rang  up  the  Church  of  Jesus 
Christ  of  the  Latter -Day  Saints  on  the  telephone. 
In  a  few  minutes  I  was  presenting  myself  to  a  lofty- 
browed,  silver-haired  old  gentleman — whether  he  was 
apostle,  high  priest,  or  elder  I  did  not  gather,  but 
for  picturesqueness  we  will  call  him  an  apostle.  He 
was  very  far  from  admitting  that  his  Church  was 
dead.  A  continuous  stream  of  missionaries  leaves 
Salt  Lake  City  every  month.  "  I  myself  went  round 
the  world  on  missionary  work  when  I  was  twenty-two," 
he  said.  "  Of  my  thirteen  sons  three  are  missionaries. 
We  have  three  thousand  Mormons  in  London,  and 
many  more  in  Europe,  especially  in  Germany  and 
Scandinavia.  With  the  Latin  races  we  have  never 


215 

made  progress,  and  we  have  abandoned  Palestine  and 
Turkey  for  the  present.  They  do  not  right  now  offer 
a  favourable  field  for  our  work." 

I  said  I  could  understand  that  right  now  they  did 
not.  "  When  I  went  round  the  world,"  continued  the 
apostle,  "  I  took  neither  staff  nor  scrip  with  me.  You 
know  we  believe  in  the  exact  words  of  the  Scripture 
without  any  spiritualising  or  interpretation.  And  I 
never  begged  a  dollar  or  lacked  a  meal  of  victual.  I 
was  kind  and  loving,  and  temperate  and  exemplary, 
and  the  Lord  always  sent  what  I  required.  It  needed 
faith — a  good  deal  of  faith  sometimes — but  faith  came 
along.  And  the  Lord  provided."  A  missionary  is 
chosen  and  sent  out  at  a  word  from  the  authorities 
of  the  Church.  Farmer,  mechanic,  lawyer,  man  of 
business,  he  must  sell  out  and  go.  And  when  a 
convert  comes  home,  as  they  call  Utah,  the  Church 
similarly  decides  where  he  shall  go  and  what  he 
shall  do.  There  are  Mormon  colonies  now  in  British 
Columbia,  Idaho,  Wyoming,  Arizona,  New  Mexico, 
and  Mexico  proper — in  which  last  they  are  suspected 
of  preserving  a  surreptitious  polygamy.  The  colonial 
system  led  us  on  to  talk  of  the  organisation  of  the 
Church.  "  It's  a  beautiful  organisation,"  he  said. 

And  so  it  is.  I  doubt  if  even  the  Church  of  Eome 
can  show  a  better.  There  is  a  first  president,  and  two 
others — the  first,  an  old  gentleman  of  ninety,  named 
Woodruff,  who  was  among  the  pioneers  of  1847. 
This  father  of  his  people  was  out  of  town,  and  I 


216  AMONG   THE  MORMONS. 

could  not  meet  him ;  it  is  recorded  that  on  arriving 
here,  fifty  years  ago,  his  first  act,  before  breaking  his 
fast,  was  to  plant  half  a  bushel  of  seed  potatoes,  and 
I  am  sure  I  should  have  loved  him.  One  of  the 
other  presidents  is  a  nephew  of  "Joseph  Smith,  the 
prophet,"  as  it  was  curious  to  hear  the  apostle  call 
him.  Under  them  are  twelve  apostles,  and  then  the 
seventy,  as  you  may  read  in  the  New  Testament. 
The  ordinary  saints  are  brigaded  into  subordinate 
seventies,  with  sevens  over  them.  The  Church  is 
supported  by  tithes,  paid  religiously  in  kind  down  to 
the  tenth  egg.  For  purposes  of  Church  administra 
tion  the  country  is  parcelled  out  into  states  and 
counties,  wards  and  precincts,  for  all  the  world  as 
in  the  political  hierarchy.  If  two  Mormons  have  a 
dispute  it  is  brought  before  the  teacher,  or  priest,  or 
deacon ;  if  he  fails  to  reconcile  the  parties,  the  bishop 
of  the  county  has  a  try.  If  they  are  still  recalcitrant, 
the  matter  comes  before  a  council  of  fifteen.  Six 
range  themselves  on  the  side  of  each,  and  one  out  of 
each  six  acts  as  attorney ;  the  three  remaining  mem 
bers  form  the  court  of  appeal.  If  this  method  does  not 
succeed  in  recommending  a  decision,  there  remains  an 
appeal  to  the  three  presidents,  whose  word  is  final. 

"Then  yo'u  discourage  litigation  in  the  civil  courts?" 
I  said.  "  We  discourage  it,  and  we  have  very  little  of 
it,"  answered  the  apostle.  "  I  wish  you  had  time  to 
visit  the  penitentiary  here ;  you  would  not  find  a 
Mormon  in  the  place.  The  warder  told  me  so  the 


"YES,  SIR;   POLYGAMY   IS   EXPENSIVE."  217 

other  day,  and  he  is  a  non-Mormon — we  do  not  speak 
of  outsiders  as  Gentiles  among  ourselves — and  so  are 
all  the  judges  here,  so  there  is  no  prejudice  in  our 
favour.  Yet  in  the  cities  like  this  or  Ogden,  our  young 
people  are  exposed  to  temptations.  There  are  drink- 
ing-saloons  and  other  undesirable  houses."  I  said 
there  were  in  most  cities  I  knew.  "  But  there  were 
none  before  non-Mormons  came  here,"  he  said  quickly. 
"  In  parts  of  this  State,  where  the  whole  population  is 
Mormon,  you  will  find  they  use  neither  tobacco  nor 
tea  nor  coffee,  much  less  saloons  or  houses  of  ill-fame. 
Our  system  of  polygamy  saved  us  from  that.  We 
have  been  much  maligned  because  of  our  polygamy," 
he  went  on.  "  We  practised  it  for  that  and  for  the 
sake  of  children.  If  it  had  been  for  lust  there  were 
other  less  expensive  ways.  You  know  your  children 
can  follow  you  to  Heaven,  but  you  can't  take  your 
mining  shares  and  your  railroads.  In  the  Bible,  you 
will  remember  children  are  always  held  the  greatest 
of  blessings. 

"  I  have  done  six  months'  imprisonment,"  he  broke 
out  suddenly,  wheeling  round  in  his  chair.  "  I  have 
been  imprisoned  for  maintaining  my  wives  and  chil 
dren  ;  and  yet  no  more  than  two  or  three  per  cent 
of  our  people  ever  made  polygamous  marriages."  "  I 
suppose  they  couldn't  afford  it,"  I  said.  "  Yes,  sir," 
answered  the  apostle,  "  polygamy  is  expensive.  Poly 
gamy  is  very  expensive,  sir.  It  runs,"  he  continued 
musingly,  "  into  a  great  many  thousand  dollars." 


218  AMONG   THE   MORMONS. 

I  am  afraid  I  almost  laughed  to  see  this  truly 
apostolic  father  stroking  his  venerable  heard  arid 
moralising  on  the  expense  of  polygamy.  But  I 
contrived  to  keep  a  straight  face  as  the  polygamous 
veteran  continued  his  exposition.  "We  were  doing 
a  great  work,"  he  said,  "  if  they  had  only  let  us  alone. 
We  were  trying  a  great  experiment.  Our  aim  was 
to  produce  an  entirely  perfect  race  —  no  physical 
deformity,  no  ugliness,  no  vice,  no  crime." 

"I  don't  quite  see  how  you  expected  to  avoid 
physical  deformity,  at  any  rate,"  I  said,  "  unless  it 
could  be  done  by  temperance  and  by  the  influence 
of  climate  " — for  the  climate  of  Salt  Lake  City  is  the 
softest,  benignest,  and  most  exhilarating  in  the  world. 

"Partly  by  that  and  partly  by  polygamy,"  he  said. 

"  By  polygamy  ?  " 

"Yes,  sir.  Our  theory  is  that  woman  is  above  all 
things  the  mother.  We  treat  her  as  mother,  not  as 
wife,  during  the  period  when  her  maternal  duties 
to  her  offspring  are  most  sacred,  trying  all  the  time 
to  surround  her  by  scenes  of  kindness  and  gentleness, 
love  and  holiness.  That  must  have  its  influence,  sir. 
You  see  it  in  our  horses  and  our  dogs ;  why  not  in 
our  women  ?  As  for  sentimental  love,  that  is 
rubbish,  —  never  lasts  longer  than  the  honeymoon, 
sir.  Good  day,  sir.  I  wish  you  could  have  stayed 
to  see  more  of  us.  Peace  be  with  you." 

Polygamy,  in  short,  is  over  and  done  with.  That 
barrier  broken  down,  Mormons  and  Gentiles  now 


THE   COMPROMISE.  219 

live  together  in  peace,  share  the  State  and  municipal 
offices  without  distinction  of  creed,  meet  in  business, 
and  to  some  extent  socially.  Occasionally,  of  course, 
there  comes  up  bitter  recrudescences  of  the  twenty 
years'  struggle,  but  forbearance  is  the  rule.  Men  who 
had  more  than  one  wife  live  only  with  the  earliest 
wed,  though  they  honourably  maintain  the  others. 
"  And  if  an  old  man,  who's  been  accustomed  to  poly 
gamy  all  his  life,  breaks  the  law  now  and  then,"  said 
a  Gentile,  "  why,  people  don't  try  to  see  him." 

The  present  harmony  is  in  the  highest  degree 
creditable  to  both  sides.  But  the  younger  genera 
tion  of  Mormons,  I  was  assured,  were  sincerely  glad 
to  be  quit  of  polygamy.  The  young  women  who  had 
come  in  contact  with  Gentiles  never  took  kindly  to 
the  mother -and -nothing -but- a -mother  theory;  the 
young  men  with  whom  the  Mormon  typewriter  or 
shop-girl  walks  out  are  almost  invariably  Gentiles. 
The  Mormon  young  men  have  ambitions,  and  see 
how  polygamy  would  stand  in  their  way.  "Most 
everybody's  on  this  earth  for  money,"  explained  a 
leading  citizen  with  engaging  directness,  and  the  new 
generation  of  Mormons  realises,  with  the  Apostle 
quoted,  that  there  is  no  money  in  polygamy. 

United  at  last,  Utah  has  gone  forth  prospering  and 
to  prosper.  The  credit  for  this  may  be  fairly  evenly 
divided.  Salt  Lake  City  has  a  matchless  situation: 
grey  mountains  keep  off  the  winds,  the  emerald  lake 
gives  health,  the  cloudless  blue  gives  life  and  activity. 


220  AMONG   THE   MORMONS. 

That  selection  is  due  to  the  founder,  Brigham  Young, 
In  the  broad,  clean  regularity  of  its  streets,  their 
even  paving,  the  brooks  that  cool  and  cleanse  them 
on  either  side,  the  avenues  of  trees,  the  complete 
system  of  telephones  and  electric  tramways,  the 
solidly  commodious,  if  uninspiring,  business  buildings 
— in  all  these  Salt  Lake  City  has  no  peer  in  America, 
West  or  East.  All  that  has  been  done  in  the  six 
years  since  the  election  that  seated  the  Gentiles  in 
the  civic  chair.  In  those  six  years  the  population 
of  the  city  has  doubled.  On  the  Mormon  side  of 
the  account  must  be  set  the  agriculture  and  the 
factories.  With  fine  soil,  and  the  best  system  of 
irrigation  in  America,  depending  for  water  not  on 
wayward  droppings  from  the  clouds,  as  do  the  States 
immediately  East,  but  on  the  never  -  disappointing 
snow  that  melts  on  the  mountains,  Utah  surpasses 
every  State  in  the  Union  in  the  uniform  generosity 
of  her  valleys.  She  can  produce  four  crops  of 
lucerne  in  a  year,  and,  with  three  crops,  seven  tons  of 
hay  to  an  acre.  Six  hundred  bushels  of  potatoes  to 
the  acre  is  no  unheard-of  yield,  and  almost  every 
European  vegetable  and  fruit  grows  almost  of  itself. 
Sheep  and  cattle  thrive  and  multiply  prodigiously. 
Besides  this,  Brigham  Young  took  care  to  equip  his 
city  witli  manufactories.  There  were  wool-mills  here 
when  nothing  of  the  kind  had  been  heard  of  elsewhere 
from  the  Mississippi  to  the  Pacific.  There  is  a  silk- 
mill,  a  shoe-factory,  a  sugar-mill.  It  was  the  policy  of 


THE   WEALTH    OF    UTAH.  221 

Young  to  make  Utah  self-sufficing  for  all  her  needs. 
He  had  to,  for  she  was  insulated  from  the  world.  And 
to  avoid  Gentile  contamination  Young  tried  to  inten 
sify  this  insulation  with  one  hand  and  neutralised  its 
inconveniences  with  the  other. 

The  ring-fence  broke  down,  as  others  have  done  and 
will  do  before  the  demoniac  energy  with  which  the 
Anglo-Saxon  fights  his  way  to  where  there  is  gold. 
The  Mormon  question  scared  capital  away,  and  there 
fore  the  Mormon  question  had  to  be  solved.  But, 
thanks  in  part  to  Mormon  ism,  in  part  to  the  Anglo- 
Saxon,  Utah  is  now  probably  the  most  prosperous  and 
promising  of  all  Western  States.  "  I  say  to  you,  sir," 
said  a  prominent  man  of  business,  "  that  this  is  the 
richest  mineral  area  in  America.  If  silver  goes  down, 
we  have  the  gold ;  if  the  mines  peter  out,  we  have  the 
crops  ;  if  the  crops  fail,  we  have  the  stock.  It  looks, 
sir,  as  if  the  Almighty  had  selected  this  land  for 
special  blessings  such  as  have  been  given  to  no  other." 
And  certainly  the  prospective  metallic  wealth  of  Utah 
is  amazing.  As  yet  it  is  hardly  scratched  here,  as 
elsewhere  in  America :  that  is  proved  by  the  continual 
revival  of  camps  like  Leadville  or  Mercur  that  had 
been  once  or  twice  deserted  and  allowed  to  fall  to 
pieces.  Now  in  Utah  is  found  every  known  metal  in 
the  world  except  two.  There  is  salt  enough  in  the 
Great  Lake,  to  say  nothing  of  the  rock  veins  of  pure 
salt,  as  clear  as  ice,  to  pay  off  every  national  debt  in 
the  world.  There  are  two  kinds  of  mineral  rubber — 


222  AMONG   THE   MORMONS. 

gilsonite  and  elaterite — which  are  found  nowhere  else, 
except  in  little  bits  in  Galicia.  There  is  ozocerite,  or 
mineral  wax,  which  is  the  best  electrical  insulator 
known.  There  are  saltpetre,  alum,  zinc,  quicksilver, 
mica,  jasper,  asbestos,  coal,  marble,  iron,  lead,  copper, 
silver,  gold.  Silver  has  been  found  in  sandstone, 
where  it  was  geologically  impossible  that  it  should 
ever  get,  and  even  in  the  trunks  of  a  petrified  forest. 
More  to  the  point,  there  are  silver-mines  in  Utah  that 
have  more  than  paid  in  dividends  for  all  the  stock 
held  in  them.  The  Centennial  Eureka  has  paid 
£360,000  on  a  capital  of  £300,000 ;  the  Bullion  Beck, 
£421,000  on  £200,000.  Half-a-dozen  others  have  done 
almost  as  much.  The  Ontario  is  the  richest  silver- 
mine  in  the  world  except  the  Broken  Hill.  It  has 
paid  over  £200,000  more  in  dividends  than  any  mine 
in  America  ;  it  has  a  pump  that  cost  £100,000,  forty- 
five  miles  of  works,  and  a  drainage  tunnel  three  miles 
long.  Even  to-day,  with  silver  down  to  sixty-five 
cents  an  ounce,  these  mines,  being  well  equipped  with 
plant,  go  on  steadily  producing  and  steadily  paying 
dividends. 

Why  had  I  never  heard  of  this  before  ?  The  reason 
given  was  that  the  Utah  people  kept  as  mum  about 
their  riches  as  a  boy  with  an  apple.  The  sons  of  the 
men  of  California  and  of  the  Comstock,  they  had 
mining  in  the  blood ;  they  went  in  scientifically  and 
professionally — just  mined  and  paid  dividends,  and 
made  no  noise  about  it.  The  men  of  Colorado  were 


THE   AMERICAN   RAND.  223 

all  amateurs — clerks  and  book-keepers,  lawyers  and 
doctors — and  when  they  made  a  find,  says  Utah,  they 
cackled  over  it  like  a  hen  with  her  first  egg. 

But  besides  all  this,  Utah  has  a  Band  of  her  own. 
This  is  in  the  Mercur  district,  once  the  seat  of  famous 
silver-mines  and  workings  for  cinnabar,  now  defunct. 
How  the  gold  got  to  be  there  as  a  chloride  nobody 
knows.  It  may  have  descended  to  the  bed  of  an  in 
land  sea,  or  have  been  shot  up  by  geysers  from  the 
centre  of  the  earth.  But  there  it  is — about  £3,  10s. 
to  the  ton,  as  at  Johannesburg,  and  treated,  as  there, 
by  the  cyanide  process,  which  saves  some  85  per  cent 
of  the  gold.  Thanks  to  this  process,  ore  can  be  mined, 
transported,  and  milled  at  about  14s.  a  ton.  Some 
ores  in  the  Golden  Gate  Mine  yield  £400  per  ton. 
There  is  said  to  be,  an  area  of  thirty  miles  where  a 
profit  of  over  £2  per  ton  is  as  safe  as  the  Bank  of 
England.  And  how  much  there  is  of  this  American 
Hand,  Heaven  only  knows.  It  is  in  its  puling  infancy, 
and  no  man  has  seen  beyond  the  very  beginning  of 
it.  If  I  were  a  capitalist  I  am  not  sure  but  I  would 
put  a  bit  on  Utah. 


224 


XXV. 

THE   PACIFIC   SLOPE. 

SAN  FRANCISCO,  October  17. 

AN  hour  or  so  out  of  Leadville  and  you  are  straddling 
the  roof  of  North  America.  Long  sweeping  ascents 
hoist  you  to  the  summit  of  a  pass  11,500  feet  above 
the  sea;  then  through  a  tunnel  you  plunge  down 
the  first  reaches  of  the  Pacific  slope.  Clinging  to 
the  skirts  of  the  mountains,  swooping  round  impos 
sible  curves,  taking  headers  down  impossible  gradients, 
the  train  hurls  you  in  a  matter  of  a  few  hours  out 
of  the  Arctic  into  lost  midsummer  again.  At  six 
in  the  morning  Leadville  was  shivering  under  the 
pale  dawn;  at  noon  the  sun  was  roasting  a  tropical 
desert.  The  highest  railway  pass  of  the  Kockies  had 
been  surprisingly  un-Alpine,  and  it  must  be  owned 
that  the  American  advertiser  has  over-estimated  its 
sublimity.  It  recalled  Scotland  far  more  nearly  than 
Zermatt.  You  were  continually  passing  glades  of 
yellow  grass  and  dry  stunted  bushes  that  at  a  dis- 


THE   RIO   GRANDE.  225 

iance  might  pass  for  heather  -  glades  studded  with 
little  lochs  and  traversed  by  chattering  little  burns. 
The  splashes  of  snow  on  the  mountain  faces  were 
but  infrequent,  and  never  once  did  the  train  top 
the  belt  of  firs.  Nearly  all  of  these  trees  had  been 
fired  in  the  early  days  of  the  railroad.  Charred 
stumps  and  beams  strewed  the  slopes,  and  the  stand 
ing  trunks  were  mostly  black  and  bare  of  every  twig. 
It  was  literally  a  forest  of  masts.  By  mid-day  we 
had  dropped  clear  out  of  the  highland,  and  passed 
into  an  altogether  new  land — a  land  of  oriental  glare 
and  colour.  It  began  with  a  canon  of  red  rock,  piling 
itself  up  on  both  sides  till  we  and  our  guiding  torrent 
seemed  like  to  sink  so  deep  into  the  bowels  of  the 
earth  that  we  should  never  find  our  way  up  to  the 
light  again.  Between  these  walls  of  crimson  sand 
stone  we  presently  ran  into  the  broadening  valley 
of  the  Eio  Grande.  These  walls  of  rock  were  no 
metaphor,  but  the  strictest  reality — sheer  down  from 
summit  to  base,  with  acres  of  face  that  might  have 
been  squared  with  a  plummet.  In  reality  they  had 
been  cut  clean  out  by  the  river.  The  valley  was 
covered  with  quilted  sand,  showing  where  the  streams 
had  crossed  and  united  and  parted  in  the  wet  season. 
Overhead,  along  the  crest  of  the  red  precipices,  a 
frieze  of  fir-trees  hinted  at  a  world  on  a  higher 
plane,  at  which  we  were  only  allowed  to  guess. 

The  sun  grew  fiercer,  the  plain  wider  and  more  arid. 
The  air  was  very  clear  and  very  dry,  and  the  out- 


226  THE  PACIFIC   SLOPE. 

lines  of  the  diverging  mountains  hardened.  We 
were  in  a  great  desert  of  sand  and  stones  and  whirl 
ing  dust.  It  was  cruel  on  the  aching  eyes,  for  green 
is  the  only  colour  that  refreshes,  and  there  was  no 
green  here.  For  growth  there  were  but  a  few  trees, 
touched  by  autumn  into  a  more  dazzling  yellow  than 
the  buttercup's,  and  tufts  of  silver-grey  sage.  Yet 
this  parched  waste  stole  upon  the  senses  with  an 
imperious  beauty  that  became  a  fascination.  The 
sky  was  sapphire;  this  again  is  no  figure  of  speech, 
for  it  shed  out  on  the  air  an  illumination  more 
lustrous  than  it  received.  Under  this  luminous  blue 
the  mountains  stood  up  in  all  fantastic  shapes,  painted 
like  the  rainbow.  Other  ranges  display  an  emulous 
confusion,  one  peak  struggling  to  overtop  another. 
These  preserved  their  level  and  their  combination 
for  miles  together.  Grey  and  cinnamon-brown  were 
their  dominant  colours ;  but  their  huge  flanks  were 
blotched  and  mottled  with  salmon  and  blood  -  red, 
puce,  mauve,  and  purple.  On  one  side  they  would 
line  themselves  out  in  barbaric  palaces,  towers  and 
parapets,  giant  castle  gates,  and  long  stretches  of 
sheer  battlement,  domes,  minarets,  and  pagodas — all 
marbled  and  barred  and  blazoned  with  every  hue 
that  is  rich  and  delicate  in  the  world.  On  the  other 
hand  would  be  flat  shapeless  mounds  of  dead  tone 
less  grey  —  God's  dump-heaps,  whereupon  was  cast 
all  the  rubble  left  over  in  the  making  of  the  world. 
And  over  all,  at  sundown,  there  floated  in  the  Western 


IN  NEVADA.  227 

sky  magic  islands  and  lagoons  of  shining  scarlet,  living 
violet,  molten  gold. 

To  leave  hyperbole,  this  desert  of  Western  Colorado 
and  Utah  was  the  one  thing  that  nobody  seems  to 
have  thought  it  worth  while  to  advertise,  and  the 
one  thing  that  no  words  can  overpraise  or  equal. 
Next  day  we  were  in  Nevada.  To  go  into  detail 
about  the  scenery  of  Nevada,  even  if  there  were  any 
detail  to  go  into,  would  be  kicking  Nevada  when  she 
is  down.  There  was  a  day — the  day  of  the  now  for 
gotten  Corns tock  lode,  which  built  half  San  Francisco 
—when  Nevada  was  the  most  brilliant  star  on  the 
flag.  You  had  only  to  step  into  Nevada  to  make  a 
fortune ;  anything  in  the  world  you  might  take  there 
and  sell  for  your  own  price.  But  that  day  is  done. 
The  Comstock  is  worked  out.  Most  of  the  silver 
mines  are  shut  down,  and  the  camps  are  silted  up 
in  sand.  Nevada  is  the  only  State  whose  population 
decreased  between  the  censuses  of  1880  and  1890 ; 
it  sank  from  62,000  to  a  beggarly  45,000 — a  figure 
exceeded  even  then  by  the  infant  territory  of  Okla 
homa.  Yet  Nevada  is  without  doubt  honeycombed 
with  precious  metals,  and  if  it  will  only  rain  a  little 
oftener,  and  if  silver  will  only  go  up  to  ninety  cents 
an  ounce,  Nevada  may  be  a  great  State  again.  Mean 
while  the  passing  impression  of  it  is  summed  up  in 
one  word — dust.  Alkaline  dust  that  came  eddying 
in  through  every  crack  in  the  Pullman  till  blue  coats 
went  yellow,  and  the  floor  was  crisp  with  it  —  dust 


228  THE   PACIFIC   SLOPE. 

that  caked  the  throat,  and  clogged  the  nostrils,  and 
stung  the  eyes.  The  sun  went  down  this  day  in  a 
thick  blinding  mist — a  mist  of  dust. 

The  third  morning  we  awoke  in  California.  Here 
was  another  turn  of  the  kaleidoscope,  displaying  huge 
well-tilled  fields,  fenced  with  substantial  posts  and 
rails,  heavy  stacks  of  hay  and  straw,  and  well-nourished 
stock.  It  was  dry,  for  the  rains  will  not  corne  for  a 
few  weeks  yet ;  but  it  looked  like  business.  Indeed 
California  is  the  most  versatile  State  of  the  Union, 
and  wants  only  time  to  be  among  the  richest.  In 
the  production  of  wheat  she  stands  third  to  Kansas 
and  Minnesota.  Alone  in  California  is  found  a  won 
derful  harvester,  which  reaps,  threshes,  and  sacks 
grain  and  stacks  straw  all  at  once.  In  the  number 
of  her  sheep  she  comes  first,  exceeding  even  Mr 
M'Kinley's  soon-to-be-protected  Ohio.  Of  the  beet- 
sugar  States  she  is  easily  first,  though  Louisiana 
produces  far  more  from  the  cane.  Her  vines  and 
her  fruits  are  famous  over  all  America,  and  now  she 
is  beginning  to  do  wonders  with  almonds  and  olives. 
As  for  her  gold,  who  has  not  heard  of  it  ?  She  has 
put  out  nearly  twice  as  much  as  all  the  other  States 
together.  When  the  long-promised,  long-delayed  high 
prices  corne  in  sight  there  should  be  new  fortunes  to 
make  in  California,  and  new  palaces  to  build  on  Nob 
Hill  in  San  Francisco. 

The  people  of  the  Pacific  slope,  living  in  a  country 
that  has  very  manifestly  ways  of  its  own  and  a  will 


MANNERS  AND  CUSTOMS.  229 

of  its  own,  have  adapted  themselves  to  their  environ 
ment.  What  it  seems  good  to  them  to  do,  that  they 
do.  With  many  of  them  fancy  goes  no  further  than 
the  wearing  of  black  shirts;  with  others  it  takes 
stronger  flights,  and  soars  to  clearing  out  banks  and 
holding  up  trains.  The  other  day  three  enterprising 
persons  were  shot  down  by  the  citizens  of  a  small 
town  in  Colorado  while  attempting  the  first  exploit. 
The  day  before  a  solitary  figure,  with  a  perforated 
sack  for  a  face,  climbed  over  the  tender  on  the  Pacific 
express  mail  not  a  dozen  miles  from  the  important 
junction  of  Ogden.  "Throw  up  your  hands,  gentle 
men,"  said  a  small  man  with  two  revolvers,  adding 
with  simple  dignity,  "I  am  here  to  rob  this  train." 
And  rob  it  he  did.  Uncoupling  the  engine  and  mail- 
cars,  he  ran  them  with  his  own  hands  half  a  mile 
down  the  line,  pocketed  the  contents  of  the  registered 
letters,  and  has  not  been  heard  of  since.  All  the 
inhabitants  of  the  Pacific  slope  have  not  the  genius 
of  this  admirable  bandit.  Yet  nearly  all  have  a 
pretty  taste  in  dress  and  manners,  which  are  fit  for 
any  court  in  the  world  by  their  absolute  innocence 
of  any  formula  or  constraint.  If  a  dishevelled  ruffian 
feels  sentimental  in  the  train  he  takes  his  banjo  from 
beside  his  gun  and  strums  a  serenade.  A  stoppage 
of  the  train  reveals  the  fact  that  it  is  but  "  Ta-ra-ra- 
boom-de-ay,"  and  out  of  tune  at  that ;  but  the  romance 
of  his  liquid  eyes  fixed  passionately  upon  a  fly  on  the 
wall  remains  one  of  the  finest  things  on  earth.  All 


230  TTTR    PACIFIC    SLOPE. 

the  little  regulations  of  life  on  the  train  are  abrogated 
by  mutual  consent  West  of  the  Rockies.  If  it  seems 
good  to  you  to  sit  a  few  miles  on  the  footboard  you 
do  it.  On  the  mail  trains  there  is,  of  course,  a  certain 
compulsion  to  get  to  San  Francisco  somewhere  within 
hail  of  schedule  time.  But  on  the  side-lines  the  con 
ductor  will  always  stop  half  an  hour  to  give  you  time 
to  get  out  and  boil  an  egg. 

San  Francisco  is  the  capital  of  the  Pacific  slope — 
the  metropolis  of  an  empire  roughly  a  dozen  times  the 
size  of  England.  Here,  so  rumour  says,  Western  free 
dom  from  restraint  takes  a  special  form ;  it  is  said  to 
be  the  one  city  of  America  where  you  can  maintain  a 
semi-official  wife  without  the  least  prejudice  to  your 
position  in  society.  "  Many  of  the  fair  matrons  of  San 
Francisco,"  remarks  the  local  guide-book,  genially, 
"have  memories  of  gallant  times  at  the  Cliff  House 
that  lie  buried  in  their  hearts  as  their  greatest  secrets. 
The  history  of  many  a  midnight  revel  there  will  for 
ever  lie  buried  in  oblivion."  No  doubt ;  but  the  fleet 
ing  stranger  has  not  time  to  investigate  these  affaire. 
Tc  him  the  outward  aspect  of  San  Francisco  would 
almost  appear  tame  and  suburban  but  for  the  ground 
on  which  it  is  built.  Standing  on  a  stretch  of  billow 
ing  sandhills,  it  everywhere  exposes  a  panorama  of 
roofs.  You  seem  to  have  a  more  intimate  knowledge 
of  it  than  of  cities  where  you  can  only  see  a  few  walls 
at  a  time.  At  night,  too,  the  long  dipping  lines  of 
lights  give  an  impression  of  distance  and  size,  air  and 


"A   RAPID   SLOPE."  231 

freedom.  To-night — Saturday  night — best  part  of  the 
city  is  gathered  into  Market  Street,  the  central  artery. 
The  dense,  business-like  promenade  on  each  pavement 
suggests  Princes  Street  in  Edinburgh  —  except  that 
here  is  electric  light  instead  of  half-darkness,  as  there 
was  till  lately  in  Edinburgh — and  an  air  at  once  light 
and  lung-filling  instead  of  fog.  Down  the  street,  to 
the  accompaniment  of  a  band  and  a  rocket  or  two, 
comes  a  political  demonstration — a  small  thing  to  the 
veteran  of  Chicago  Day.  At  the  corner  where  the 
local  candidate  is  to  speak  a  scientifically  built  bonfire 
is  dispensing  heat  and  blaze  and  liberal  sparks.  What 
would  the  police  say — the  Briton  wonders  phlegmati- 
cally — if  Mr  Goschen  announced  his  campaign  by  a 
bonfire  in  front  of  St  George's,  Hanover  Square? 
But  in  this  land  of  competing  sensations  some  such 
little  attraction  is  as  necessary  as  the  candidate 
himself. 

"  It's  a  very  rapid  slope,"  remarked  a  gentleman  at 
Leadville  of  this  portion  of  the  country,  and  in  the 
moral  sense,  in  which  he  used  them,  his  words  were 
true.  The  newspapers  are  even  more  sensational  than 
in  New  York.  The  Emporium — the  Bon  Marche*  of 
San  Francisco,  and  one  of  the  numerous  biggest  stores 
on  earth  that  this  country  boasts — finds  it  conducive 
to  trade  to  woo  its  patrons  by  a  band  of  music  perched 
on  a  pedestal  in  the  midst  of  a  restaurant,  and  under 
a  dazzlingly  illuminated  glass  dome.  It  also  has  the 
happy  idea  of  setting  up  a  balustrade  in  the  midst  of 


232  THE   PACIFIC   SLOPB. 

one  of  the  important  departments,  over  which  you 
can  watch  golden-haired  maidens  receiving  cash  and 
popping  back  change  into  gilt  pneumatic  tubes. 

No  doubt  San  Francisco  must  be  amused.  It  has  a 
park,  which  may  not  be  the  biggest  in  the  world,  but 
is  probably  the  most  completely  equipped  for  pleasure 
without  overmuch  profit.  Within  a  thousand  acres  it 
contains  lawns  and  drives  and  beds  of  dahlias,  chry 
santhemums,  and  cannas  vying  with  those  of  Chicago ; 
a  series  of  hothouses  with  tropical  plants  in  earth  and 
water  ;  a  bicycle  -  track,  a  riding  -  track,  a  baseball- 
ground,  a  children's  playground  with  swings,  giant- 
strides,  and  donkeys ;  a  Japanese  garden  with  a  fur 
nished  bungalow,  and  miniature  bridges  and  streams, 
and  shrubs  tied  down  with  string  into  the  gnarled  and 
twisted  forms  of  miniature  forest  trees ;  a  belvidere, 
with  view  over  the  Pacific;  a  waterfall  and  three 
artificial  lakes  with  boats ;  a  museum  and  a  valley 
laid  out  with  seats  for  concerts ;  an  aviary  with 
canaries  and  blue-grey  red-billed  Java  sparrows  and 
illuminated  humming-birds  and  macaws ;  a  deer-park, 
with  kangaroos ;  a  squirrel -house ;  a  grizzly  bear 
(presented  by  a  local  newspaper);  and  half-a-dozen 
survivors  of  the  bison.  Hampstead  Heath,  the  Zoo, 
the  British  Museum,  Battersea  Park,  and  the  Hall  by 
the  Sea  may  each  have  something  that  this  Park  has 
not.  But  what  a  boon  for  Bank  Holidays  to  have 
them  all  together  in  one ! 

Then   there    is   Cliff   House,   remembered  of   fair 


THE   DIVERSIONS   OF   SAN    FRANCISCO.  233 

matrons.  By  it  are  the  baths,  the  biggest — but  let 
us  avoid  tautology.  Besides  many  huge  basins  of 
water  of  all  depths  and  all  temperatures,  besides 
every  acrobatic  device  for  not  getting  straight  into 
the  water,  besides  rows  and  rows  of  dressing-rooms 
like  the  corridors  of  a  first-rate  hotel,  the  biggest 
basin  has  a  bandstand  in  the  middle,  and  a  huge 
theatre  round  it,  where  San  Francisco  can  hear  con 
certs  and  see  swimming  shows.  Likewise,  there  is  a 
museum  of  weird  sea-beasts  and  Japanese  tableaux, 
and  a  panorama  of  the  world.  When  you  are  tired  of 
that  there  are  gardens  with  white  plaster  statuary, 
and  a  monkey-house  and  a  terrace  overlooking  the 
sea.  Hence  you  can  watch  the  dirty-yellow  sea-lions 
sprawling  on  the  rocks  below,  and  listen  to  them 
barking  like  retrievers.  On  the  right  a  streak  of 
cloud  hangs  half-way  up  the  cliffs  that  form  the 
northern  pillar  of  the  Golden  Gate.  In  front  the 
Farallones  Islands,  twenty-eight  miles  out — the  last 
speck  of  West  before  West  becomes  East — make  little 
dints  in  the  orange  flames  of  the  sunset.  The  black 
ening  rollers  of  the  Pacific  thud  beneath  your  feet. 
Turning  round,  you  face  the  hotel — busy,  hospitable, 
discreet — where  they  are  serving  dinners  for  two  in 
private  rooms.  A  rapid  slope  ?  At  any  rate,  the  San 
Franciscans  enjoy  themselves. 


234 


XXVI. 

THE    ISSUE. 

SAN  FRANCISCO,  October  18. 

I  HEARD  a  short  while  ago  an  explanation  of  the 
Silver  movement,  and  its  culmination  at  the  Chicago 
Convention,  which  was  so  elaborately  picturesque 
that  it  is  perhaps  worth  while  setting  down  here. 
According  to  this  theory,  the  Chicago  platform  was 
only  the  last  move  of  a  game  which  has  been  playing 
ever  since  the  Sherman  Act,  if  not  for  many  years 
longer.  It  is  an  enormous  political-commercial  job 
on  the  part  of  silver -owners  and  their  friends  to 
secure  for  themselves  the  control  of  the  whole  govern 
ment  of  the  United  States,  and  untold  booty  besides. 

One  of  the  operations  of  this  ring  was  the  tremen 
dous  bulling  of  silver  immediately  after  the  Sherman 
Act  had  authorised  huge  purchases  of  that  metal  by 
the  United  States  Government.  In  league,  it  is  said, 
with  the  Eothschilds  and  other  great  capitalists,  the 
silver  men  forced  up  the  price  of  their  metal  almost 
to  par  with  gold;  they  would  have  got  it  actually 


SILVER  IN  THE   SENATE.  235 

to  par,  or  even  to  a  premium,  and  reaped  enormous 
profits,  had  not  the  Baring  failure  come  upon  them  to 
throw  their  combination  out  of  joint. 

But  the  most  interesting  side  of  the  great  game  has 
been  the  political.  The  silver  barons  aimed  at  raising 
themselves  into  a  power  like  the  Chartered  Company, 
as  seen  by  its  enemies — a  power  which  should  use  the 
leverage  of  politics  for  huge  private  gains,  and  the 
attainment  of  unlimited  personal  ambition.  It  began 
in  the  Senate.  Under  the  United  States  constitution 
the  Senate  is  not  based  upon  proportional  representa 
tion,  as  are  the  House  of  Representatives  and  the 
Electoral  College  for  the  choice  of  President.  Every 
State,  great  or  small,  sends  two  Senators  to  Washing 
ton.  It  is  evident  that  this  provision  of  the  consti 
tution  offers  a  prodigious  opportunity  to  an  interest 
having  the  local  distribution  of  the  silver -mining 
industry.  Colorado,  Nevada,  Idaho,  and  Montana 
contain  between  them,  on  the  last  census,  less  than 
seven  hundred  thousand  inhabitants.  The  State  of 
New  York  has  well  over  five  millions,  but  the  four 
States  have  eight  Senators  to  New  York's  two. 

Now,  these  four  States  being  virtually  nothing  but 
silver-mining  camps,  it  was  easy  for  the  silver  ring  to 
establish  a  party  in  the  Senate  representing  the  ring, 
and  nothing  but  the  ring,  just  as  Mr  Rochfort  Maguire 
was  said  to  represent,  not  County  Clare,  but  Mr  Cecil 
Rhodes.  Hence  arose  a  group  of  such  men  as  Senators 
Teller,  Dubois,  Stewart,  and  Jones  of  Nevada — some 


236  THE   ISSUE. 

of  them  mine-owners,  some  of  them  attorneys  engaged 
for  the  political  representation  of  the  silver  interest, 
but  all  of  them  men  of  great  ability  and  adroitness. 
Nominally  Eepublicans,  really  buccaneers,  they  begin 
by  putting  pressure  on  the  party  of  their  putative 
affiliation.  They  bartered  their  support  of  Protec 
tion  against  a  toleration  on  the  part  of  the  official 
Republicans  of  bimetallism.  It  became  a  sort  of 
working  principle  of  the  Eepublican  party  that  no 
official  pronouncement  must  be  made  derogatory  to 
the  claims  of  silver.  The  party  expressed  itself  again 
and  again  in  favour  of  bimetallism.  Mr  M'Kinley 
expressed  himself  personally  again  and  again  to  the 
same  effect;  he  would  have  been  perfectly  ready  to 
fight  this  campaign  on  the  free  silver  basis  if  the 
Convention  of  St  Louis  had  told  him  to. 

Meanwhile  —  and  herein  lies  the  beauty  of  the 
combination  —  the  silver  group  had  been  at  work 
with  the  Democratic  party  also.  The  rural  districts 
were  manured  with  tons  of  '  Coin's  Financial  School.' 
The  Silver  party  got  to  work  in  the  local  units  of 
organisation — the  primaries  in  the  precincts,  the  com 
mittees  in  the  counties.  They  worked  so  secretly 
and  to  such  purpose  that  the  Democratic  party  was 
leavened  with  the  theory  of  free  coinage,  and  the 
organisation  captured  before  Gold  Standard  Demo 
crats,  like  President  Cleveland  and  Senator  Hill, 
realised  what  was  upon  them.  Then  came  the 
Chicago  Convention.  To  the  Convention  came  all 


THE  TWO   CONVENTIONS.  237 

the  delegates  from  the  already  electroplated  local 
organisations,  ready  to  vote  for  silver.  More  than 
this,  the  ring — remember,  I  am  only  repeating,  though 
repeating  what  I  was  told  by  a  man  of  great  know 
ledge  and  a  foremost  economical  authority — had  pre 
pared  them  a  man  against  the  Presidential  nomination, 
as  Samuel  had  prepared  Saul  in  the  Bible.  That  Mr 
Bryan's  great  speech  about  the  Crown  of  Thorns  and 
the  Cross  of  Gold  had  been  written  out  and  rehearsed 
beforehand  nobody  familiar  with  the  unspontaneous 
methods  of  American  political  oratory  can  doubt  for 
a  moment.  But  on  this  theory  the  delegates  were 
also  prepared.  The  storming  of  the  Convention  by 
that  speech,  and  the  nomination  of  Mr  Bryan,  were 
nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  put-up  scheme,  carefully 
worked  out  for  weeks  before.  With  the  official 
Democracy  definitely  pledged  to  independent  free 
coinage  of  silver,  and  the  official  Eepublicanism  afraid 
to  pledge  itself  definitely  against  it,  the  silver  buc 
caneers  stood  indeed  on  velvet. 

But  then  came  the  St  Louis  Convention,  and  put 
the  whole  game  to  the  touch.  Even  the  St  Louis 
Convention  dared  not  put  itself  on  record  as  opposing 
bimetallism  outright.  But  it  declared  for  waiting 
upon  the  consent  of  other  nations.  By  the  strenuous 
efforts  of  Mr  Kohlsaat,  a  Chicago  capitalist,  the  Con 
vention  was  induced  to  take  a  firm  line  for  the  gold 
standard,  on  present  conditions.  Even  that  was  touch 
and  go,  for  the  party  wished  to  hedge  to  the  last,  and 


238  THE  ISSUE. 

to  leave  the  decisive  word  "  gold  "  out  of  its  declara 
tion  of  faith.  But  Mr  Kohlsaat  insisted,  and  the 
battle  of  gold  was  won.  Then  followed  what  was 
described  to  me  as  a  great  uprising  of  the  national 
financial  conscience — not  unmixed,  I  would  add,  with 
the  personal  financial  conscience.  Anyhow,  the  feel 
ing  for  gold  surged  up,  and  the  Tellers  and  Stewarts 
saw  themselves  obliged  to  quit  their  double  -  faced 
machinations  and  go  into  a  straight  fight.  For  them 
and  their  clients  the  stake  is  variously  put  at  from 
seven  to  twelve  millions  sterling  a -year.  That  is 
what  they  stand  to  win  if  free  silver  becomes  law 
and  sends  the  bullion  up  to  par.  To  this  trifle  they 
add  the  political  dominion  of  seventy  millions  of 
people.  It  is  a  big  stake — perhaps  the  biggest  played 
for  since  Napoleon,  anyhow  the  biggest  since  Dr 
Jameson.  But  by  the  best  accounts  that  stake  is 
not  going  to  be  landed. 

All  this  may  be  an  imaginative  libel ;  it  is  strenu 
ously  denied  that  there  is  any  silver  trust  at  all :  but 
it  is  a  good  story,  so  let  it  go.  At  any  rate,  it  is 
illustrative  of  the  questions  on  which  this  election  is 
hinging.  People  state  and  deplore  the  fact  that  for 
the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the  States  the  poor  are 
now  banded  against  the  rich.  Others  point  out  that 
you  can  draw  an  almost  exact  frontier  along  the 
Potomac,  Ohio,  and  Mississippi,  that  cuts  off  the 
Bryan  country  and  the  M'Kinley  country.  For  the 
second  time  in  the  history  of  the  States  one  territorial 


BREAD-AND-BUTTER  POLITICS.  239 

area  is  brigaded  against  another.  But  I  believe  that 
both  these  facts,  striking  enough  superficially,  are  only 
accidental.  The  real  fight  is  not  poor  against  rich  or 
South  and  West  against  North  and  East,  but  one  com 
mercial  interest  against  another,  a  fight  of  pocket 
against  pocket.  In  the  North  they  make  their  money 
by  financial  operations,  banking,  brokering,  and  the 
like,  and  by  manufactures.  Free  silver  would  dis 
locate  the  first  of  these  operations,  and  Protection 
would  put  a  premium  on  the  second.  In  the  South 
and  the  Mississippi  valley  they  make  their  money, 
when  they  make  it  at  all,  by  crops.  Free  silver 
would  mean  higher  prices  for  their  produce,  and 
perhaps  a  relief  from  their  debts  due  to  the  North, 
while  Protection  would,  to  a  certain  extent,  put  them 
in  the  hands  of  the  manufacturing  trusts.  In  the 
Kockies  they  mine.  Free  silver  would  raise  the  value 
of  their  depreciated  product,  and  give  employment  to 
perhaps  a  quarter  of  a  million  of  idle  men.  On  the 
Pacific  Coast  they  mine  gold  and  farm.  Free  silver 
would  hurt  the  one  industry  and  help  the  other. 
Therefore  the  Pacific  Coast  stands  in  a  somewhat 
vague  and  doubtful  position.  It  is  bread-and-butter 
politics,  all  through,  from  Cape  Cod  to  the  Golden 
Gate. 

Perhaps  an  exception  to  this  generalisation  ought 
to  be  made  as  regards  the  South;  there  bitterness 
against  the  North  is  probably  at  least  as  potent  as 
the  economic  factor.  But  for  other  parts  of  the 


240  THE    ISSUE. 

country  one  or  two  examples  seem  to  go  in  support 
of  my  theory  of  this  election.     One  of  the  few  States 
west  of  the  Missouri  where  Mr  M'Kinley  i»  conceded 
to  have  a  chance  is  Wyoming.     Wyoming  is  a  rather 
absurd  little  State,  given  over  to  female  suffrage  and 
generous  divorce  laws ;  it  has  the  smallest  population 
in  the  Union  except  Nevada,  and  nobody  pretends  to 
take  Wyoming  seriously.    But  Wyoming  gets  its  living, 
not  like  Montana  in  the  North  by  silver  mining,  or 
Nebraska  in  the  East  by  farming,  but  by  the  produc 
tion  of  coal.     The  mines  are  largely  owned  and  man 
aged  by  Eastern  capitalists.     Now,  if  Mr  M'Kinley  is 
elected,  one  of  the  anticipated  blessings  of  his  reign  is 
a  protective  tariff  on  coal.     Wyoming  reckons  to  be 
then  able  to  sell  coal  in  San  Francisco  cheaper  than  it 
can  be  sold  from  Vancouver  Island,  and  Wyoming 
reckons  to  put  much  money  in  its  purse.     Therefore, 
there  is  thought  to  be  a  possibility — so  I  am  assured 
by  seemingly  good  authority:  I  have  not  set  foot  inside 
the  State — that  Wyoming,  in  the  very  heart  of  the 
Bryan  district,  will  cast  her  three  votes  for  M'Kinley. 
Utah  affords  another  instance.     Nobody  supposes  that 
Utah  is  going  for  M'Kinley ;  silver  is  too  strong  for 
that.     But  apart  from  the  silver  industry,  Utah  grows 
sheep  and  cattle.      Therefore  a  Protective   duty  on 
wool  and   on   Mexican    imported   cattle    would    put 
money  in  Utah's  purse  also;  whence  shrewd  judges 
predict  a  strong  minority  in  Utah  also  for  M'Kinley. 
These   two  cases  illustrate  and   explain   the   very 


IN    A   NUTSHELL.  241 

practical  interest  which  every  single  citizen  takes 
in  this  election.  No  doubt  the  theoretical  question 
has  its  charm.  Where  the  heart  is  there  will  the 
conversation  be ;  probably  no  democracy  has  ever 
tasted  the  privileges  of  popular  government  with 
such  gluttonous  enjoyment  as  the  United  States  have 
enjoyed  these  six  months'  talk  of  dollars.  But  the 
matter  goes  deeper  than  the  mere  pleasure  of  academic 
debate.  This  is  perhaps  the  only  contested  election 
of  the  world's  history  in  which  every  elector  has  a 
direct  money  interest  in  the  result.  The  only  diffi 
culty  is  to  determine  exactly  where  that  interest 
lies.  The  arguments  of  either  party  are  directed  less 
to  maintaining  the  broad  balance  of  national  expedi 
ency  than  to  showing  the  individual  voter  that  it  was 
money  in  his  individual  pocket  to  vote  for  this  man 
or  the  other.  It  must  not  be  inferred  from  this  that 
arguments  which  take  higher  ground — appeals  to  na 
tional  integrity  and  patriotism — are  consciously,  or 
even  unconsciously,  insincere.  Without  doubt,  many 
men  support  the  gold  standard  because  they  believe 
that  to  abandon  it  would  be  to  dishonour  the  bill  of 
their  country.  Many  support  silver  because  they 
believe  that  it  will  lead  back  to  national  prosperity. 
But,  to  put  it  summarily,  the  East  has  money,  and 
therefore  wants  to  keep  up  the  price  of  it ;  the  West 
and  South  have  none,  and  therefore  want  to  keep  the 
price  down.  That  is  the  issue  in  a  nutshell. 


242 


XXVIL 

THE   HEATHEN  CHINEE. 

SAN  FRANCISCO,  October  19. 

THE  Heathen  Chinee  is  peculiar  to  San  Francisco  and 
the  Pacific  coast.  Not  but  what  as  an  individual  he 
is  fairly  common  in  New  York;  nowhere,  indeed,  in 
the  United  States  would  anybody  ever  turn  to  look 
back  at  a  Chinaman.  But  it  is  only  in  San  Francisco, 
which  stands  opposite  to  his  own  country,  that  he  has 
attained  the  proportions  of  a  racial  problem.  It  is  no 
inapt  illustration,  by  the  way,  of  the  vastness  of  this 
country  that  it  maintains  a  full-grown  racial  problem 
at  each  end,  each  one  knowing  little  and  caring 
nothing  of  the  other.  In  the  South  Atlantic  States 
the  sparse  Chinee  is  ignored,  but  the  nigger  is  a  bug 
bear.  In  the  Pacific  States  the  nigger  is  a  fellow- 
citizen,  while  the  Chinee  is  a  reptile. 

The  method  by  which  the  Chinee  annexed  one  of  the 
oldest  and  most  fashionable  quarters  of  San  Francisco 
for  his  own  exclusive  use  has  all  the  simplicity  of  true 
genius.  He  did  it  by  sheer  filth.  A  Chinee  took  a 


THE  CONQUEST   OF   CHINATOWN.  243 

room  in  a  house,  and  imported  other  Chinese  to  share 
it  —  for  a  consideration.  Comparatively  cleanly  in 
their  own  persons — though  only  very  comparatively 
— they  never  cleaned  their  clothes  or  their  bedding, 
or  their  rooms  or  their  kitchens,  or  anything  that  was 
theirs.  Presently  the  stench  became  such  that  no 
white  man  would  live  in  the  house ;  the  whites  went 
out  and  the  yellows  came  in.  Then  the  two  houses  on 
either  side  became  untenantable ;  they  also  became 
filled  with  Chinese.  Then  came  the  turn  of  the  next 
two,  and  so  on  all  down  the  street.  But  what  was  the 
owner  of  the  houses  doing  all  this  while  ?  Had  he 
nothing  to  say  to  this  process  of  driving  out  his  white 
tenants  ?  Not  he.  For  houses  peopled  with  Chinese 
are  the  most  profitable  form  of  property  in  San  Fran 
cisco.  They  live  thirty,  or  forty,  or  fifty  in  a  twelve- 
roomed  house,  and  rent  rolls  in  to  a  brisk  tune.  And 
if  they  cause  dilapidations  they  never  ask  for  repairs ; 
no  building,  plumbing,  plastering,  or  painting  troubles 
the  landlord  of  the  Chinese  quarter.  Thus  the  Chinee 
conquered  and  colonised  a  little  city  for  himself  in  the 
heart  of  San  Francisco — a  city  of  dirt  and  colour,  of 
shrewdness  and  superstition,  of  industry  and  de 
bauchery  ;  a  city  absolutely  oriental  in  the  middle  of 
the  absolute  Occident.  Too  far  West  has  become  East. 
Out  of  the  blaze  of  electric  light  and  the  whirr  of 
electric  tram-cars  you  make  one  turn  into  darkness 
and  silence.  You  are  in  the  middle  of  China.  The 
houses  were  built  by  westerners  for  westerners ;  but 


244  THE   HEATHEN   CHINEE. 

it  is  wonderful  how  completely  the  orientals  have 
orientalised  them.  First  overlaying  everything  with 
a  thick  coat  of  filth,  they  have  built  out  green  balconies, 
hung  out  green  streamers  with  huge  golden  signs  in 
their  own  characters,  and  papered  the  walls  with  red 
placards,  on  which  they  inscribe  the  news  of  the  day. 
Above  a  little  fruit-stall  you  will  see  projecting  from 
the  wall  a  wooden  box  rather  bigger  than  a  coffin. 
It  might  be  a  receptacle  for  refuse,  or  perhaps  a 
cistern.  But  it  is  neither ;  it  is  the  house  of  the  stall- 
keeper.  When  he  closes  his  stall  at  night,  or  in  the 
early  morning,  he  climbs  into  that  box  by  a  ladder,  and 
goes  to  bed.  When  you  see  that,  you  begin  to  realise 
the  possibility  that  white  neighbours  would  find  the 
heathen  Chinee  a  little  unsanitary. 

The  Chinaman  has  adorned  his  special  district  of 
San  Francisco  with  many  buildings  sufficiently  pre 
tentious.  There  are  two  theatres,  but  neither  of  them 
is  open  just  at  present.  This  is  the  dead  season  in 
Chinese  theatrical  circles ;  they  are  exchanging  the 
companies  that  have  served  their  year  in  San  Francisco 
for  fresh  ones.  The  idolatrous  Chinee  is  commend- 
ably  free  from  mummer-worship.  The  actors  live  in 
the  theatre,  and  that  for  a  very  sufficient  reason ;  if 
they  show  themselves  in  the  street  the  people  set 
upon  them  with  sticks,  stones,  vegetables,  and  any 
other  handy  weapons,  and  half  kill  them.  The  ex 
planation  of  this  genial  custom  is  that  the  actor,  being 
a  vagabond  and  a  Bohemian,  sends  no  money  over  to 


A  RESTAURANT.  245 

his  relations  in  China,  whereas  all  others  do.  To 
send  money  thus  out  of  the  country  is,  in  American 
eyes,  the  blackest  of  Chinese  sins;  to  fail  to  do  so 
is  exactly  as  black  in  the  eyes  of  the  Chinaman. 

Chinatown  is  also  adorned  with  palatial  restaurants. 
The  Chinee  can  be  frugal,  but  it  is  a  mistake  to  suppose 
that  he  will  not  fling  his  money  about  on  occasion. 
Banquets  at  two  pounds  a-head,  with  champagne  and 
every  delicacy  of  the  season,  are  far  from  uncommon 
in  squalid  Chinatown.  You  enter  the  banqueting- 
room  up  a  broad  staircase ;  the  room  itself  is  large 
and  handsome,  with  stained  floors,  wooden  carvings 
that  may  be  quaint  but  are  undeniably  rich  and 
elaborate,  hangings  of  fine  texture,  and  solid  walnut- 
wood  chairs  with  marble  seats.  In  a  corner  is  the 
safe  in  which  the  takings  of  the  establishment  are 
treasured.  It  has  eight  locks  and  eight  keys — one  for 
each  of  the  eight  proprietors ;  none  can  get  at  the  safe 
except  in  the  presence  of  all  the  others.  The  banquet 
is  enriched  with  every  meat  and  every  drink  of  the 
country,  sometimes  with  the  choicest  vintages  of 
France,  usually  with  many  excellent  vegetables  native 
to  the  soil,  but  eaten  only  by  the  Chinee,  and  always 
with  such  delicacies  as  ducks  flattened  out  and  pressed 
like  pressed  beef,  with  all  manner  of  birds  and  beasts 
and  fish  preserved  and  imported  from  China.  The 
men  sit  round  the  table  and  feast  solemnly  from  ten 
or  so  till  four.  The  women  sit  in  a  ring  behind  them, 
and  eat  only  what  their  masters  are  pleased  to  pass 


246  THE    HEATHEN   CHINEE. 

over  their  shoulders.  A  band  of  single-stringed  fiddles, 
gongs,  and  cymbals  makes  music  hardly  conducive  to 
a  Western  digestion.  And  if  a  reveller  feels  the  need 
of  opium,  there  is  a  divan  against  the  wall  where  he 
can  lie  and  smoke  his  pipe,  and  then  rise  and  fall  to 
again. 

The  joss-houses  make  another  of  the  architectural 
glories  of  Chinatown.  Here  again  is  much  stained 
wood  on  floor  and  walls,  with  magnificent  embroidered 
hangings,  with  carved  and  gilded  wooden  screens  and 
decorations.  The  Chinese  eye  must  be  as  alien  to 
ours  as  the  Chinese  ear,  for  the  Western  devil  can 
see  little  form  or  symmetry  in  the  queer  twists  and 
twirls  of  these  masterpieces.  If  the  Chinee  can  take 
in  all  these  multitudinous  niggles  and  quiggles  of  gold, 
and  at  one  view  combine  them  all  into  one  effect,  then 
he  must  have  an  eye  with  a  million  facets,  like  a 
beetle's.  One  of  the  carvings  in  the  biggest  joss- 
house  is  a  special  gift  from  the  Emperor  of  China, 
who  endowed  the  church  in  recognition  of  a  subscrip 
tion  by  its  members  to  alleviate  a  famine  at  home. 
It  bears  his  monogram  in  the  centre — a  golden  cob 
web,  not  unlike  the  fist  of  Abdul  the  Damned  as 
shown  on  the  Turkish  cigarettes.  Before  each  shrine 
in  the  joss-house  stands  a  cup  of  tea,  in  case  the  joss 
should  feel  thirsty ;  he  takes  it  without  milk  or  sugar. 
The  great  shrine  is  a  kind  of  altar  with  a  hideous 
bearded  image  seated  upon  it.  This  represents  a 
historic  Chinee  who  actually  lived  on  this  earth,  a 


THE   SIX  COMPANIES.  247 

brave,  wise,  and  godly — or  should  we  say  jossly  ? — man, 
who  makes  intercession  with  the  real  joss.  The  real 
joss  dwells  behind  a  screen,  veiled  from  the  public  eye. 
There  are  no  services  of  a  congregation ;  the  faithful 
drop  in  one  by  one,  kneel  down  on  mats,  and  prefer 
their  petitions.  But  first  of  all  they  bang  a  gong  to 
make  sure  that  the  joss  is  awake  and  attending  to  his 
business. 

The  Chinee  is  deceitful  above  all  things,  and 
desperately  wicked.  He  is  law-abiding  as  against 
the  whites,  but  within  Chinatown  every  kind  of  law 
less  outrage  goes  hardly  checked.  There  is  indeed 
a  rule  within  rule  among  the  Chinese.  The  six 
provinces  which  furnish  the  Chinese  population  of 
San  Francisco  have  their  several  presidents.  The 
six  companies,  they  are  called ;  each  worships  in  its 
separate  joss-house,  and  talks  its  separate  dialect.  A 
suit  between  two  members  of  the  same  company  is 
brought  before  the  president  of  the  company;  a 
dispute  between  two  of  its  different  companies,  before 
the  six  presidents  in  conclave.  Like  the  Mormons, 
the  Chinese  discourage  the  use  of  the  civil  courts. 
These  presidents  have  of  course  no  legal  status  in  the 
United  States,  but  they  maintain  their  authority  in  a 
manner  effective  and  thoroughly  Chinese.  If  a  Chinee 
in  San  Francisco  defies  their  mandate,  they  send  word 
back  to  his  native  place;  whereupon  his  father  and 
mother  are  burned.  But  in  spite  of  this  rule,  terror 
and  anarchy  are  the  real  government  of  Chinatown. 


248  THE   HEATHEN   CHINEE. 

Secret  societies,  known  to  the  West  under  the  generic 
title  of  Highbinders,  blackmail  and  murder  at  will. 
Wealthy  merchants  are  constrained  to  subscribe  to 
these  organisations:  if  they  refuse,  they  are  found 
dead  in  the  street.  A  cobbler  was  evicted  one  day 
from  the  stall  he  had  occupied,  and  a  big  house  was 
shortly  after  built  on  its  site.  But  not  a  room  in  that 
house  could  be  let.  The  perplexed  proprietor  sent 
for  a  detective  knowledgeable  in  the  ways  of  China 
town,  and  he  discovered  an  unobtrusive  placard  on 
the  new  house.  "  Whoever  occupies  any  part  of  this 
building  until  I  am  paid  two  thousand  dollars  com 
pensation,"  ran  its  genial  legend,  "  will  be  killed." 
The  cobbler  was  accommodated  with  a  room  in  the 
new  house,  the  notice  disappeared,  and  the  building 
filled  up  with  tenants.  Sometimes  the  different  gangs 
of  Highbinders  carry  on  private  war  between  them 
selves,  and  the  streets  are  thick  with  smoke.  They 
use  long  pistols,  and  rest  the  barrel  on  the  left  arm  tc 
aim ;  they  shoot  very  badly,  but  the  streets  of  China 
town  are  so  narrow  that  a  bullet  is  seldom  wasted 
However,  the  Highbinders  have  attracted  the  very 
urgent  notice  of  the  Government  as  well  as  that  of 
the  Chinese  Minister  at  Washington.  They  have 
been  swept  out  more  than  once.  They  grow  up 
again,  but  their  best  days  are  done. 

Besides  being  bloodthirsty,  the  Chinee  has,  as  every 
body  knows  a  genius  for  fraud  and  treachery  of  every 
kind.  The  personal  vices  he  possesses  in  their  most 


AN   OPIUM   DEN.  249 

luxuriant  growth.  He  lias  invented  a  spirit  that  will 
make  you  drunker  for  ten  cents  than  any  other  brew 
on  earth.  He  smokes  opium  fervently  without  any 
British  Government  to  tempt  him  to  it.  A  tedious 
vice  opium-smoking  appears.  Imagine  a  dark,  dank, 
underground,  foul -smelling  courtyard,  full  of  all 
manner  of  garbage.  Eound  it  rise  three  storeys  of 
wooden  rooms  with  verandahs,  on  which  the  inmates 
cook  their  food.  Open  a  door,  and  you  are  in  a 
Chinese  doss-house.  It  is  something  between  a 
scullery  and  the  forecastle  of  an  ill-found  merchant 
man.  Two  tiers  of  filthy  bunks  run  round  it,  without 
bed-clothes — accommodation  for  about  two  dozen  in 
the  space  of  a  decent  coal-cellar.  On  one  of  the  bunks 
lay  a  dirty  little  leather -skinned  old  man  smoking 
opium.  He  did  not  so  much  as  turn  his  head  at  the 
entrance  of  foreign  devils ;  he  took  no  notice  of  any 
thing  but  his  opium.  In  his  fingers  he  held  a  long 
pipe ;  before  him  was  a  lamp  and  a  jar  of  opium.  He 
collected  a  drop  of  the  viscous  syrup  on  a  bodkin  and 
kneaded  it  in  the  flame,  turning  it  round  and  round 
till  it  hardened  into  a  little  glutinous  ball  about  the 
size  of  a  pea.  Then  he  put  it  in  his  pipe,  lit  it  at  the 
lamp,  and  inhaled  deeply.  Out  came  a  cloud  of  blue, 
fragrant  smoke.  Another  deep  inhalation,  another 
cloud  of  smoke — and  the  pipe  was  out.  It  took  at 
least  two  minutes  to  prepare,  and  about  ten  seconds 
to  smoke.  To  produce  the  desired  intoxication,  it 
takes  a  seasoned  smoker  twenty  pipes — nearly  three- 


250  THE   HEATHEN    CHINEE. 

quarters  of  an  hour  twiddling  a  needle  in  a  lamp-jet. 
We  need  not  be  afraid  that  opium-smoking  will  ever 
become  a  Western  vice. 

As  for  the  other  debaucheries  of  the  Chinee,  they 
had  better  be  left  untold.  He  practises  all  that  have 
names,  and  many  that  have  not.  All  the  women  in 
Chinatown  are  bought  and  sold — as  truly  slaves  as 
any  mulatto  girl  in  Carolina  before  the  war.  It  is 
true  that  the  Chinee  has  his  virtues.  He  is  wonder 
fully  clever  in  an  imitative  way ;  he  will  watch  a 
white  man  making  shoes  in  his  booth  until  he  is  as 
good  a  shoemaker  himself.  He  is  a  perfect  servant  in 
a  land  where  servants  are  rare  and  expensive.  He 
wellnigh  monopolises  the  laundry  business,  not  only 
in  San  Francisco,  but  in  all  large  towns.  He  furnishes 
admirable  tailoring  to  the  most  fastidious  dandies  of 
the  Pacific  Coast.  He  is  frugal,  industrious,  filial. 
But  his  very  virtues  conspire  with  his  vices  to  earn 
him  the  detestation  of  the  white  man.  He  is  a  good 
workman :  he  undersells  white  labour.  He  is  frugal, 
and  he  sends  his  savings  home  to  his  parents :  he  is 
draining  money  out  of  the  country.  He  is  a  parasite, 
a  louse;  shake  him  off.  So  the  importation  of  new 
Chinamen  into  the  States  is  now  rigorously  forbidden. 
Some  come  in  by  virtue  of  skilful  and  resolute  perjury, 
but  not  many.  Chinatown  must  diminish,  and  the 
ground  won  for  a  space  by  the  East  will  pass  back 
again  to  the  West. 

In  the  meantime  it  is  hard  for  the  stranger  to  take 


A  DKEAM  OF  ALADDIN.  251 

Chinatown  seriously  for  good  or  for  evil.  It  is  too 
much  like  falling  asleep  and  dreaming  of  Aladdin. 
Under  the  soft  paper  lanterns  there  pass  noiseless 
figures  in  blouses  and  loose  trousers  and  slippers,  with 
black  red- tufted  caps  and  pigtails  down  to  their  knees. 
You  see  the  big-spectacled  jewellers  patiently  chasing 
gold  ornaments  or  melting  them  in  the  flames  from 
their  blow-pipes.  You  see  barbers  with  short  square 
razors,  shaving  head  and  eyebrows,  cleaning  out  ears, 
and  scraping  eyeballs.  Up  a  steep  flight  of  broken 
stairs  you  see  almond-eyed  Jezebels  simpering  behind 
lattices.  Then  you  turn  twenty  yards  to  the  left,  and 
there  are  the  electric  light  and  the  electric  cars  again, 
dry-goods  stores  and  cut-rate  ticket -offices.  It  was 
surely  a  dream  of  Aladdin, 


XXVIII. 

ON    THE    ROAD. 

MOOSE  JAW,  ASSINIBOIA,  CANADA,  October  26. 
IF  we  are  a  nation  of  shopkeepers,  then  the  United 
States  are  a  nation  of  commercial  travellers.  Equally 
energetic  in  their  different  ways,  the  shopkeeper  is 
the  more  substantial  and  the  more  prudent  of  the 
two,  the  traveller  the  more  vivacious,  restless,  and 
plausible.  So  it  is  with  us  and  the  Americans.  It 
is  not  only  the  bagman  proper,  though  he  is  more 
ubiquitous  and  more  assertive  here  than  anywhere 
else,  and  is  respected,  almost  worshipped,  in  propor 
tion  to  his  assertion.  But  every  American,  bagman 
or  other,  must  be  ever  on  the  move. 

It  is  necessary  for  his  business :  with  an  enter 
prising  caution  that  Britons  might  well  emulate,  he 
never  invests  his  money  in  any  property,  be  it  a 
thousand  miles  away,  without  first  going  to  take  a 
look  at  it.  But  travel  is  also  necessary  for  his 
pleasure,  even  for  his  existence.  To  him  a  week's 


THE   ROVING    AMERICAN.  253 

journey  is  far  less  hardship  than  a  week's  stay  in  the 
same  place.  I  believe  many  Americans  regard  that 
day  as  wasted  in  which  they  do  not  see  the  inside  of 
a  railway  train.  This  roving  temperament  is,  after 
all,  perfectly  natural.  The  native  American  has  it 
in  his  blood.  He  descends  from  generations  of  col 
onists,  and  the  colonist  is  essentially  the  man  who 
thinks  there  is  something  a  little  further  on  a  little 
better  than  what  he  has,  and  who  goes  after  it.  This 
sort  of  rainbow-chaser  seldom  makes  money,  but  he 
makes  empires.  Even  the  emigrant  into  America 
acquires  the  vagrant  disposition.  I  met  an  old  friend 
in  San  Francisco,  a  man  who  came  out  here  at  fifty 
or  so.  He  has  not  prospered  —  as  why  should  he  ? 
But  he  would  be  very  loath  to  go  back.  "  I  should 
miss  the  journeys,"  he  said — "  going  up  to  Victoria, 
or  down  to  Los  Angeles."  Now,  in  England,  that 
man  never  even  wanted  to  go  away  in  the  summer 
from  the  suburb  of  London  in  which  he  lived.  But 
when  once  a  man  has  got  as  far  as  America,  he 
acquires  the  contempt  of  distance ;  having  come  so 
far,  he  might  as  well  go  a  bit  further.  Americans 
often  seem  to  travel  for  the  mere  satisfaction  of  going 
through  a  new  country,  and  staying  the  night  in  a 
new  hotel.  They  add  them  to  their  collection,  so  to 
say,  as  an  entomologist  adds  a  beetle.  And  that 
though  Western  towns  are  all  exactly  alike,  and 
instead  of  being  named,  might  just  as  well  be  num 
bered  like  their  streets.  Whether  because  of  busi- 


254  ON   THE   ROAD. 

ness,  then,  or  pleasure,  or  habit,  America  has  to  be 
well  equipped  for  travel.     And  America  is. 

The  American  constitution  has  been  called  a  system 
of  checks.  So  is  American  life.  When  you  want  to 
travel  you  give  your  baggage  to  the  porter  of  your 
hotel,  and  he  gives  you  a  check  in  return.  At  the 
station  you  reclaim  it  with  the  check,  and  pass  it  in 
at  a  counter  and  receive  another  check.  As  you 
approach  your  destination  a  functionary  conies  along 
the  train,  takes  your  check,  and  gives  you  another 
check  in  its  place.  He  fishes  out  your  baggage  and 
conveys  it  to  your  hotel — for  a  consideration.  You 
have  left  your  third  and  last  check  at  the  office  of  the 
hotel  when  you  enter  it,  and  thence  it  is  delivered  up 
on  receipt  of  the  baggage.  At  first  you  bless  this 
arrangement  as  the  salvation  of  the  traveller.  But 
after  a  few  weeks  of  it  the  tyranny  of  the  check  be 
comes  so  galling  that  you  begin  to  long  for  the  fine 
old  English  method  of  dumping  down  your  goods  in 
front  of  a  porter  and  leaving  them  to  find  the  way  for 
themselves.  You  would  even  hail  it  as  a  personal 
triumph  if  some  of  your  baggage  would  get  lost.  But 
it  never  does.  Sometimes  it  arrives  late,  but  it  always 
arrives.  Yet  it  seldom  arrives  in  the  shape  in  which 
it  started,  if  that  is  any  consolation.  They  who  have 
to  do  with  baggage  see  to  that.  You  very  soon  dis 
cover  why  Americans  carry  their  goods  in  ironclad 
trunks,  and  why  it  is  madness  for  anybody  to  do  any 
thing  else.  I  started  out,  like  an  idiot,  with  a  new 


THE   CHECK    SYSTEM.  255 

leather  portmanteau.  They  ripped  the  stout  brass 
lock  off  in  the  first  week — not  for  plunder  apparently, 
but  simply  because  it  is  the  tradition  of  the  service. 
They  punched  it  and  kicked  it  and  danced  on  it.  In 
softer  hours,  when  literary  inspiration  came,  they 
wrote  on  it.  My  portmanteau  to-day  is  an  epitome 
of  the  political  sentiment  of  the  United  States  from 
New  York  to  San  Francisco.  As  a  historical  docu 
ment  it  is  beyond  price,  and  I  am  contemplating 
the  gift  of  it  to  the  library  of  Congress  at  Wash 
ington.  As  a  portmanteau  it  has  both  feet  in  the 
grave. 

The  system  of  checks  is  not  confined  to  travellers' 
luggage.  The  conductor  of  the  train  passes  ceaselessly 
to  and  fro  asking  for  your  ticket  and  giving  you  i* 
check  in  return,  or  asking  for  your  check  and  return 
ing  your  ticket.  If  you  hand  your  stick  to  a  boy  in  a 
hotel  while  you  write  your  name  in  the  register,  he 
dashes  off  to  stow  it  away  in  some  secret  place,  and 
returns  triumphant  with  a  check.  In  the  very  hotel 
bar,  when  you  buy  sevenpence  ha'porth  of  whisky  you 
get  a  check  and  walk  two  yards  across  the  bar  to  pay 
at  a  desk.  But  the  apotheosis  of  the  check  is  at 
Niagara.  When  you  go  down  to  the  Cave  of  the 
Winds  you  strip  off  all  your  clothes  and  leave  them, 
as  well  as  your  valuables,  in  a  tin  box  with  the 
attendant.  Then  you  go  down  to  battle  with  the 
cataract  attired  only  in  a  suit  of  pyjamas,  a  suit  of 
oilskins,  and  a  check  lashed  round  your  neck,  rising 


256  ON   THE   ROAD. 

and  falling  with  the  beating  of  your  heart.  Nc 
wonder  the  American  speaks  of  death  as  handing  in 
his  checks.  It  is  only  by  death  that  he  can  rid  him 
self  of  them. 

But  in  all  such  mechanical  devices  as  these  for 
saving  labour  or  promoting  convenience  the  Ameri- 
oans,  after  all,  are  easy  masters  of  the  world.  The 
only  fault  to  be  found  with  them  is  that  they  push 
ingenuity  so  far  that  it  sometimes  becomes  almost  in 
convenient.  For  billiard-markers,  to  take  an  instance, 
they  use  strings  of  numbered  checks  hung  across  the 
room.  Now  it  is  no  easier  to  mark  on  a  string  of 
checks  than  on  the  ordinary  sort  of  marker  we  use  at 
home ;  but  it  is  novel  and  it  is  ingenious,  and  that  is 
enough  to  commend  it  in  America.  You  might  say 
the  same  of  the  device  which  puts  the  gum  of  an 
envelope  on  the  body  of  it  and  leaves  the  flap  clean, 
until  it  occurs  to  you  that  thereby  you  can  seal  the 
envelope  without  licking  the  gum.  Then,  if  you  object 
to  a  little  harmless  necessary  gurn  on  your  tongue,  you 
cry  out  in  admiration  of  the  ridiculously  simple  stroke 
of  genius  which  gets  rid  of  it ;  if  you  do  not,  you  may 
think  the  invention  hardly  worth  inventing.  This  is 
a  very  fair  example  of  the  beauty  and  simplicity  of 
many  American  arrangements.  Perhaps  you  could  do 
without  it,  yet  you  cannot  but  admire  it. 

But  the  field  where  American  ingenuity  runs  riot 
is  the  railway  carriage.  In  this,  as  in  a  warship, 
space  is  necessarily  limited,  and  this  necessity  is  the 


THE   SLEEPING-CAR  257 

fertile  mother  of  inventions  innumerable.  Space  is 
not,  of  course,  so  rigidly  limited  as  in  one  of  our 
own  short  four -sectioned  coaches.  The  American 
long-distance  car,  to  carry  forty- eight  people,  is  three 
or  four  times  the  length  of  ours,  much  higher,  and 
enormously  heavier.  As  neither  tracks  nor  signals 
are  all  they  might  be  on  most  American  railroads, 
the  cars  are  built  to  stand  a  tremendous  strain  with 
out  breaking  up.  The  skeleton  is  of  iron  or  steel 
girders,  again  as  if  it  were  a  battleship;  with  this 
framework  and  their  general  weight  they  would  cut 
through  an  English  railway  carriage  as  the  Majestic 
would  cut  through  a  penny  steamboat.  I  was  privi 
leged  yesterday  to  see  one  of  these  cars  tip  over. 
The  West-bound  train  to  Vancouver  was  leaving  a 
station  where  it  had  stopped  alongside  of  us,  and  in 
getting  back  on  to  the  main  track  it  ran  off  the 
metals.  Dragged  against  a  rail,  it  snapped  it  as  you 
might  snap  a  clay  pipe- stem,  and  then  ran  over  the 
edge  of  the  low  embankment.  It  swayed  heavily, 
poised  itself,  seemed  to  hang  in  the  air,  half  over, 
for  a  minute,  two  minutes  —  was  it  going  to  stay 
there  for  ever? — then  crash  it  went  over  on  to  its 
side.  There  was  a  shed  by  the  track  which  broke 
the  fall — and  itself,  too,  as  if  it  had  been  an  empty 
matchbox.  Yet  so  far  as  I  could  see  the  car  was 
absolutely  unharmed.  Willing  hands  immediately 
smashed  half-a-dozen  double -windows  to  get  out 
the  five  people  who  were  rolling  about  inside.  But 


258  ON   THE  ROAD. 

I  believe  those  windows  made  up  the  grand  total  of 
all  the  damage  done. 

Inside,  the  sleeping-car  is  a  miracle  of  luxury.  All 
the  wood  is  mahogany — or  looks  like  it — and  all  the 
cushions  are  velvet.  It  looks  as  rich  and  solid  as  a 
British  dining-room  of  the  old  school.  Yet  every 
single  thing  you  see  is  hollow ;  everything  is  a  cup 
board  or  a  bed-fitting,  or  some  convenience  of  the 
sort.  The  panels  in  the  sloping  wall  above  your 
head  let  down  to  form  the  upper  berths.  Between 
them  and  the  wall  of  the  car  is  stored  the  bedding. 
The  seats  —  which  run  across  the  car,  facing  each 
other  in  pairs,  with  an  aisle  down  the  middle — draw 
out  to  make  the  lower  berths.  You  get  sheets,  two 
pillows,  and  as  many  rugs  as  you  like.  The  bed  is 
not  unreasonably  short,  and  there  is  no  necessity  to 
tie  yourself  up  in  knots,  unless  you  are  well  ovei 
six  feet.  As  for  breadth,  the  bed  is  as  wide  as  a 
seat  built  for  two  persons,  and  I  believe  two  persons 
sometimes  occupy  a  berth.  The  objection  to  this  is 
the  rooted  American  hatred  of  fresh  air,  and  the 
tendency  to  be  ill  if  a  room  or  car  goes  below  75°. 
You  are  even  forbidden  to  have  the  window  giving 
on  to  your  berth  open  at  night — a  prohibition,  like 
all  others  in  the  United  States,  habitually  defied.  As 
for  your  clothes,  it  looks  impossible  in  the  daytime 
that  space  could  be  found  to  dispose  of  them.  But 
at  night,  when  you  climb  into  your  upper  berth  or 
dive  into  your  lower,  you  find  that  pegs  and  racks 


THE  DINING-CAR.  259 

and  hammocks  have  grown  up  round  you  on  every 
side.  After  two  days'  practice  you  know  exactly 
where  to  stow  each  garment.  There  is  room  under 
the  lower  berth  for  your  boots  and  your  bag,  and  the 
black  porter  has  cleaned  your  boots  in  the  morning. 
It  should  be  added  that  your  modesty  is  protected  by 
a  curtain  which  you  can  button  as  closely  as  you  will. 
At  night  the  car  looks  like  a  narrow  tapestried  pas 
sage,  with  nothing  but  peeping  boot-toes  and  rustling 
snores  to  mark  it  for  a  fully-peopled  dormitory. 

This  is  not  all  the  sleeping-car.  There  is  a  draw 
ing-room — simply  a  cushioned  coupt,  in  which  four 
people  can  live  and  sleep — and  a  smoking-room,  with 
arrangements  for  washing  and  the  like.  There  are 
hot  steam-pipes  under  the  seats  which  maintain  an 
equable  warmth,  and  you  wonder  what  sort  of  a  bar 
barian  you  are  to  come  from  a  country  where  they 
have  got  no  further  than  tin  water-cans.  Between 
the  seats  are  sockets  on  which  tables  can  be  set  up, 
and  the  tables  have  clips  to  hold  a  tablecloth.  In  what 
are  called  buffet-cars,  you  eat  food  cooked  by  a  nigger 
who  travels  with  the  train.  Such  food  is  simple  and 
almost  uniformly  bad.  As  it  is  cooked  in  a  space  of 
some  five  feet  by  eighteen  inches,  this  is  hardly  won 
derful.  To  other  trains  a  dining-car  is  attached. 
With  tables  and  comfortable  seats  ranged  down  it, 
this  is  a  very  different  affair;  you  are  well  served, 
well  fed,  and  not  heavily  charged.  Where  no  dining- 
car  is  attached,  the  train  stops  twenty  minutes  to 


260  ON   THE   ROAD. 

half  an  hour  at  a  wayside  station  for  meals.  They 
are  sometimes  wonderfully  good  and  sometimes  won 
derfully  bad,  and  when  you  only  halt  twenty  minutes 
I  am  not  sure  but  I  prefer  the  bad.  To  have  to  eat 
through  excellent  trout,  sausages,  bacon,  buttered 
eggs,  fried  potatoes,  and  beef-steak  —  all  piled  up 
round  a  single  plate — is  almost  too  much  for  twenty 
minutes,  and  only  encourages  unmanly  regret  for  the 
unattainable.  Another  luxury  in  the  way  of  railway 
accommodation  is  a  drawing-room  car  with  easy- 
chairs,  but  these  we  have  at  home  even  more  sump 
tuous.  Lastly,  there  is  the  observation-car — an  open 
shed  on  wheels,  designed  to  give  you  a  view  of  the 
scenery. 

By  far  the  most  magnificent  sleeping-car  I  have 
met  is  that  of  the  Canadian  Pacific,  wherein  I  am 
trying  to  write  this.  It  is  wider  and  loftier  than 
any  other,  more  richly  and  elegantly  upholstered. 
You  can  tell  at  once  that  it  hails  elsewhere  than 
from  the  United  States  by  the  inscription  under  the 
looking-glasses.  "  Tuum  est,"  it  says,  and  you  may  bet 
your  life  no  Yankee  ever  had  any  use  for  a  Latin 
inscription  inside  a  railway  carriage.  In  this  car  the 
two  middle  sections  of  the  six  have  their  seats  along 
the  wall  of  the  car  instead  of  across  it :  this  gives  a 
broader  floor  in  the  middle.  Above  these  lateral 
seats  are  sheets  of  window  nearly  twice  the  usual 
size.  The  smoking-room,  again,  is  an  especial  joy. 
It  occupies  the  whole  width  of  the  car  at  its  hinder 


THE   C.P.R.  261 

end,  instead  of  being  cranked  in  by  a  corridor  leading 
past  it,  as  in  most  of  the  cars  of  the  United  States. 
With  the  same  large  windows  on  either  side,  and  other 
windows  and  a  door  forming  the  back  end  of  the  car, 
it  affords  a  splendid  prospect  on  three  sides  of  the 
train.  The  food  on  these  C.P.R.  trains  is  above  the 
average,  and  the  price  is  consistently  insignificant. 
There  is  even — joy  of  joys  ! — a  bath-room.  True,  you 
may  not  have  a  bath  in  it,  for  the  bath  season  closes 
on  the  first  of  October,  but  at  least  the  bath-room 
affords  a  sanctuary  for  the  naked,  and  he  is  a  poor 
traveller  who  has  not  mastered  the  theory  and  prac 
tice  of  taking  a  perpendicular  bath.  The  sleeping  and 
dining  cars  in  the  United  States  belong  to  the  Pull 
man  Company,  and  are  run  by  them :  you  take  your 
berth  at  a  different  booking-office  from  that  where 
you  get  your  railway  ticket.  The  Canadian  Pacific 
owns  and  runs  its  own,  and  for  comfort  and  good 
service  I  doubt  if  they  have  their  equal  in  the  world. 
Everything  is  done  that  admirable  organisation,  care, 
and  courtesy  can  do  to  mitigate  the  horrors  of  the 
week's  journey  across  the  continent.  The  only  doubt  is 
whether  the  Company  does  not  begin  at  the  wrong  end. 
Why  not  shorten  the  journey  ?  It  is  said  that  when 
Sir  William  Van  Home  travels  on  the  line  his  special 
runs  fifty  and  sixty  miles  an  hour.  We  poor  devils 
have  never  once  seen  forty.  It  would  be  the  easiest 
thing  in  the  world  to  shorten  the  journey  by  at  least 
a  day,  and  until  this  is  done  the  C.P.R.  will  never 


262  ON    THE    ROAD. 

really  compete  with  the  Trans-continental  lines  far 
ther  South. 

One  feature  of  American  train  life — for  train  life 
is  what  it  comes  to  when  you  have  passed  your 
second  night  on  board  —  is  the  deportment  of  the 
officials.  The  conductor  and  his  subordinates,  the 
porter  and  the  brakeman,  the  boy  who  sells  news 
papers  and  cigars  and  chewing-gum  —  they  may  all 
be  found  sitting  on  the  passengers*  seats,  dining  at 
the  passengers'  table,  washing  in  the  passengers' 
basins,  and  conversing  cheerfully  the  while  with  the 
passengers'  selves.  It  is  thought  by  some  that  they 
do  this  to  show  that  they  are  as  good  as  you.  If  so, 
they  do  it  so  much  that  they  must  think  the  fact 
needs  a  good  deal  of  ilemonstration.  Most  English 
people,  and  many  Americans,  object  to  this  habit,  and 
especially  complain  at  having  to  drink  out  of  a  glass 
wherefrom  a  nigger  has  just  rinsed  his  gums.  I  grant 
that  this  is  an  extreme  case,  but  then  happily  there 
are  always  two  glasses.  And,  personally,  I  don't  mind 
the  rest  of  it.  I  have  as  firm  a  belief  in  the  natural 
inequality  of  man  as  anybody  in  the  world.  I  believe 
that  I  am  superior  in  intelligence,  education,  and 
manners,  though  possibly  inferior  in  virtue  and 
material  wealth,  to  any  railway  guard  in  America. 
But  is  that  any  reason  why  I  should  not  speak  to 
him  ?  If  we  spoke  only  to  those  whom  we  deem  our 
equals,  the  art  of  language  would  be  lost  in  a  fort 
night.  And  if  I  speak  to  him,  why  should  he  not  sit 


DEMOCRACY   ON    THE   TRAIN.  263 

down  by  me  ?  I  have  had  most  instructive  conver 
sations  upon  the  public  attitude  towards  Anarchism 
with  a  conductor  whose  father  was  a  university 
graduate,  and  on  the  currency  question  and  political 
economy  generally  with  a  black  porter.  As  for  wash 
ing,  why  not  ?  They  don't  dirty  the  soap  ;  they  have, 
in  fact,  exactly  the  same  quality  of  dirt  on  their 
hands  as  I  have.  At  the  passengers'  table  they  eat 
quite  correctly  —  except,  of  course,  the  blacks ;  it 
would  be  going  too  far  to  admit  them.  The  truth  is, 
that  so  far  as  you  treat  a  man  as  an  equal,  thus  far 
he  tends  to  become  one.  And  I,  unlike  so  many 
Americans,  believe  in  Democracy. 


264 


XXIX. 

BUSINESS. 

Niw  YORK,  October  90, 

BUSINESS  is  business  all  the  world  over ;  so,  at  least,  I 
have  been  assured  by  those  who  ought  to  know.      But 
it  is  more  emphatically  business  in  the  United  States 
than  anywhere  else.     In  England  business  is  business, 
and  there's  an  end  of  it ;  here  business  is  everything, 
and  there  is  no  end  or  boundary  to  it.     It  affords  the 
one  career  in  the  country.     Politics  is  a  matter  that 
a  citizen  must  interest  himself  in  one  year  out  of 
four ;  but  the  class  which  pursues  politics  day  by  day 
and  week  by  week  is  a  small  one,  and  neither  very 
respectable  nor  very  respected.     The  Church,  litera 
ture,  art,  the  services — they  may  be  all  very  excel 
lent  things  in  their  way  if  anybody  has  the  curious 
fancy  to  make  a  life  of  them.     But  they  are  hardly 
regarded   as   serious   careers.      The  leading  men,  go 
where  you  will  —  the  show  citizens  that  your  hos 
pitable  entertainer  gives   you  introductions  to  —  are 
aot  any  of   these;   they  are  the  first  men  of  busi- 


QUALITY   AKD    PRICE.  265 

ness.      The  first  men  of  business  are  the  first  men 
outright. 

It  would  be  idle  for  me,  who  do  not  know  the 
difference  between  a  bill  of  exchange  and  a  deben 
ture,  to  attempt  to  give  any  idea  of  the  methods  on 
which  American  business  is  conducted.  I  presume 
that  the  law  of  supply  and  demand,  pending  its 
repeal  by  President  Bryan,  is  much  the  same  here 
as  at  home.  Yet  I  seem  to  notice  a  keenness,  a 
cut-throat  ferocity  of  competition  in  America,  which 
is  at  least  less  conspicuous  in  England.  With  u* 
the  largest  and  most  largely  advertised  concerns  are 
not  necessarily  the  best,  nor  even  reputed  to  be  the 
best.  If  you  want  to  get  a  bonnet,  as  I  understand, 
of  the  one  unmistakable  and  inimitable  distinction, 
you  do  not  go  to  Peter  Kobinson's  or  Marshall  & 
Snellgrove's,  but  to  some  little  half-lighted  shop  in 
Bond  Street.  So  with  other  commodities.  The  vari 
ous  supply  stores  and  universal  providers  are  a  vast 
convenience,  but  I  have  been  told  that  there  are 
wares  a  shade  better  to  be  got  elsewhere.  But 
here  everybody  goes  to  the  big  store  of  the  place,  for 
the  little  ones  cannot  live  with  the  prices.  In  Eng 
land — of  course  with  limitations — quality  rules  the 
market;  in  America,  price. 

For  instance,  in  Philadelphia  everybody  goes  to 
Wanamaker's.  Mr  Wanarnaker  was  once  Postmaster- 
General  of  the  Republic,  and  I  should  think  he  was 
a  rattling  good  one.  His  store  was  already  the  largest 


266  BUSINESS. 

retail  drapery  and  hosiery  and  haberdashery,  and  all 
that  sort  of  business,  in  the  world,  when  by  the 
recent  purchase  of  a  giant  establishment  in  New 
York  he  made  it  more  largest  still.  Now  the  work 
ing  of  Wanamaker's,  as  I  am  informed,  is  this.  It 
is  no  use  going  there  to  get  what  you  want.  You 
must  go  to  get  what  Mr  Wanamaker  wants  to  sell. 
He  tells  you  each  morning  in  the  newspapers  what 
he  has  got  to-day,  and  if  you  want  it  you  had  better 
go  and  get  it :  the  chances  are  it  will  be  gone  to 
morrow.  The  head  of  each  department  is  intrusted 
with  a  certain  amount  of  capital,  and  buys  his  goods  at 
his  own  discretion.  But  woe  unto  him  if  he  does  not 
turn  over  his  capital  quickly.  There  is  a  rule  that  no 
stock  may  be  in  the  house  more  than,  I  think,  three 
months ;  after  that  off  it  must  go  at  any  sacrifice. 

"You  can  always  tell  when  Mr  Wanamaker's  in 
town,"  said  a  shop -walker,  "because  there's  always 
some  change  being  made."  And  then  he  added,  in 
a  half -voice  of  awestricken  worship,  "I  believe  Mr 
"Wanamaker  loves  change  for  its  own  sake."  For  the 
sake  of  custom,  I  should  say;  for  this  formula  of 
change  for  change's  sake  is  one  of  the  master-keys 
of  American  character.  Mr  Wanamaker  keeps  a  pic 
ture-gallery,  with  some  really  fine  modern  French 
paintings,  to  beguile  his  patrons.  To  -  day  he  will 
have  an  orchestrion  playing,  to  -  morrow  a  costume 
exhibition  of  spinning  -  girls  from  all  the  lands  of 
the  earth, — every  day  something  new.  One  day,  by 


THE   WANAMAKEK   SYSTEM.  2G7 

moving  a  table  six  feet,  so  that  people  had  to  walk 
round  it  instead  of  past  it,  he  increased  the  sales  of 
an  article  from  three  shillings  to  hundreds  of  pounds. 
If  that  is  not  genius,  tell  me  what  is. 

But  the  really  Napoleonic  —  I  was  going  to  say 
daemonic — feature  of  the  Wanamaker  system  is  the 
unerring  skill  with  which  it  reaps  its  profits  out  of  the 
necessities  of  others.  Fixing  his  price  according  to 
the  economic  doctrine  of  final  utility — taking  no  ac 
count,  that  is,  of  the  cost  of  production,  but  only  of 
the  price  at  which  most  people  will  find  it  worth  their 
while  to  buy — Mr  Wanamaker  realises  10  per  cent  for 
himself,  and  an  enormous  saving  for  the  consumers. 
A  cargo  of  rose-trees  had  been  consigned  from  Holland 
to  a  firm  of  florists,  which  failed  while  the  plants  were 
in  mid-ocean.  They  went  a-begging  till  Mr  Wana 
maker  bought  them  up  and  put  them  on  the  market 
at  about  half  the  rate  current  in  Philadelphia.  In  ten 
days  not  one  of  the  twenty  thousand  was  left.  A  firm 
which  manufactured  hundred -dollar  bicycles  found 
itself  without  cash  to  meet  its  liabilities.  Mr  Wana 
maker  bought  up  the  stock  and  altered  the  maker's 
label  as  well  as  one  peculiarity  of  the  gear.  Then  he 
broke  the  price  to  sixty-six  dollars,  and  subsequently 
to  thirty-three.  They  all  went  off  in  a  week  or  so. 
He  bought  the  plates  of  a  huge  edition  of  the  hundred- 
dollar  Century  Dictionary,  altered  the  title-page,  bound 
them  for  himself,  and  put  the  article  on  the  market  at 
fifty-one  dollars  and  a  half.  In  six  weeks  he  had  sold 


268  BUSINESS. 

two  thousand.  A  firm  in  California,  which  manufac 
tures  a  particularly  excellent  kind  of  blanket,  was  in 
difficulties.  Mr  Wanamaker  bought  up  the  stock,  and 
sold  it  at  a  third  of  the  normal  price  in  three  days. 

All  this  is  magnificent  for  the  customer,  and  ap 
parently  not  unprofitable  to  Mr  Wanamaker.  But 
plainly  somebody  has  to  pay,  and  who  ?  The  small 
trader.  After  the  rose-tree  deal  nobody  wanted  to 
buy  roses  of  the  florists  of  Philadelphia.  The  city  is 
stocked  with  bicycles  and  Century  Dictionaries,  and 
nobody  within  a  radius  of  miles  will  want  to  buy  a 
pair  of  blankets  for  a  generation.  Mr  Wanamaker 
sends  out  three  hundred  and  sixty-five  thousand 
parcels  to  his  customers  in  the  slackest  month  of  the 
year,  and  turns  over  thirteen  million  dollars  annually. 
The  small  people,  it  is  presumed,  are  ground  to  powder 
against  the  wall. 

Eather  similar  is  the  story  of  Armour's  glue-factory 
in  Chicago.  Mr  Armour's  original  line  in  life,  as  all 
the  world  knows,  is  packing  pork.  If  your  tastes  lie 
in  the  direction  of  blood,  you  can  spend  a  happy 
morning  at  his  place  watching  dying  hogs  kick  out 
puncheons  of  it.  Personally  I  didn't  like  it.  Not 
that  I  object  either  to  blood  or  to  pork ;  but  I  resented 
the  way  in  which  the  screaming  hog,  sliding  down  a 
rail  by  one  of  his  hind-legs,  is  unsympathetically  put 
in  position  for  the  knife  by  a  hireling :  he  might  at 
least  be  allowed  to  go  to  the  sticker  in  his  own 
attitude.  But  the  pork-packing  business  is  not  what 


ARMOUR'S   SOAP.  269 

it  was,  so  Mr  Armour  had  to  look  to  his  by-products. 
Nobody  would  pay  him  a  profitable  price,  so  he  went 
into  the  by-product  business  himself.  He  melts  the 
fat  in  huge  vats,  and  runs  it  down  into  moulds,  where 
it  congeals  as  soap;  the  soap  is  run  through  wires 
which  cut  it,  and  through  machines  which  stamp  it, 
and  there  you  are.  The  fat  that  is  over  from  the  soap 
runs  into  the  next  room,  and  runs  out  of  it  as  glycer 
ine.  The  oddments  of  hide  and  hoof  from  the  deceased 
tinned  meat  are  boiled  up  and  cooled  and  run  through 
wires,  and  come  out  glue.  The  hair  and  bristles  are 
blown  about  hydraulically,  and  heated  and  cooled  and 
curled,  and  come  out  ready  for  sofa-pillows.  The  shin- 
bones  reappear  as  tooth-brushes,  or  go  to  Japan  for 
imitation  ivory  ware  ;  the  odd  bones  are  ground  up  into 
manure.  The  very  drippings  of  the  fat  are  caught  in 
a  trap,  on  the  brink  of  falling  into  the  river,  and 
brought  back  captive  to  the  soap-kettles.  And  what 
results  from  all  this  ?  Mr  Armour,  having  a  world 
wide  repute,  and  a  world-wide  business  organisation, 
is  underselling  the  firms  which  cut  the  price  of  his  fat 
and  bristles.  They  squeezed  him;  now  he  squeezes 
them.  It  is  the  fortune  of  war. 

It  is  not  wonderful  that  producers  try  to  escape 
from  the  mutual  butchery  of  business  competition 
by  the  construction  of  trusts  and  combines.  It  is 
even  less  wonderful  that  the  consumer  fiercely  re 
sents  these.  You  have  only  to  represent  Mr  M'Kiu- 
ley  as  the  nominee  of  the  trusts  to  raise  a  howl  of 


270  BUSINESS. 

execration.  But  to  what  extent  America  is  really 
cursed  with  these  organisations  it  is  hard  to  deter 
mine.  Newspaper  agitators  see  a  trust  in  every 
thing,  from  bread  down  to  meat  -  skewers.  I  am 
hardly  competent  to  criticise  the  statement,  but  I 
doubt  it.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  any  such 
combination  to  regulate  the  price  of  a  necessity  of 
life  is  illegal  in  this  country,  and  it  is  hardly  cred 
ible  that  if  they  existed  widely  evidence  would  not 
be  found  to  convict  their  members,  at  least  occa 
sionally.  For  instance,  it  is  fairly  certain  that  there 
is  a  trust  in  anthracite  coal.  That  was  as  good  as 
proved  by  the  fact  that  a  number  of  tenders  being 
recently  made  for  coal  in  Chicago,  half-a-dozen  firms 
quoted  widely  different  figures  for  bituminous  coal, 
but  all  the  same  high  price  for  anthracite.  Legal 
proceedings  were  pending,  or  said  to  be,  when  I  left 
Chicago.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  urged  that  the 
Standard  Oil  Company,  an  arrant  and  unblushing 
trust,  has  been  the  means  of  supplying  very  excel 
lent  oil  to  everybody  at  a  very  low  price.  It  seeks 
its  profits  by  the  extended  use  of  oil  rather  than 
by  a  high  price  —  by  making  it  cheap  instead  of 
dear.  Of  course,  this  is  no  justification  for  leaving 
trusts  unregulated  by  law;  that  would  be  madness 
in  any  State.  For  the  more  the  Standard  Oil  Trust 
allures  the  consumer  to  make  oil  a  necessity  of  life, 
the  more  helpless  he  will  be  delivered  into  its  hands 
when  some  day  it  sees  fit  to  pocket  untold  millions  by 


BAD   AND   GOOD.  271 

raising  the  price.  But  I  believe — I  may  be  wrong — 
that  the  present  necessity  for  such  regulation  is  lim 
ited  to  a  very  few  cases. 

But  I  am  straying  away  from  the  question.  What  is 
tlu>  effect  of  this  universality  of  business  in  America  ? 
It  has  its  murderous  side,  as  we  have  seen.  The  weak 
men  who  go  down  are  not  pitied,  and  especially  not 
respected.  They  are  dead  failures.  In  Europe  there 
remain  some  kindly  superstitions  under  which  the  un 
successful  may  take  refuge  from  public  contempt.  A 
man  may  be  incompetent,  but  after  all  he  is  of  good 
family ;  he  is  well  educated  ;  he  is  a  fine  musician  ;  he 
is  a  witty  fellow.  But  in  America  the  man  who  fails 
in  business  has  failed  in  the  one  thing  there  is  to  do. 
The  one  test  of  worth  in  business  is  to  make  money, 
for  that  is  the  object  of  business.  Failing  in  that,  his 
failure  is  absolute. 

But  there  is  another  side.  In  the  first  place,  the 
pre-eminence  of  business  is  a  great  clip  that  holds 
this  unwieldy  country  together.  An  active  man  of 
business  will  have  interests  in  every  quarter  of  the 
States.  These  interests  compel  him  to  know  every 
part  of  the  country,  its  economic  conditions,  the 
habits,  pursuits,  and  character  of  its  inhabitants. 
But  for  this  bond  I  verily  believe  the  Union  would 
go  to  pieces  in  a  twelvemonth.  But  contact  with  all 
parts  of  the  country  brings  understanding,  rubs  the 
edge  off  prejudice,  promotes  a  candid  consideration 
of  the  position  of  others.  Prejudiced  or  uninformed 


272  BUSINESS. 

the  American  may  sometimes  be ;  wantonly  unjust — 
I  say  it  deliberately — never.  Another  good  result,  as 
I  take  it,  of  the  deification  of  business  is  that  it  keeps 
democracy  fresh  and  wholesome.  Commerce  is  the 
most  democratic  of  all  pursuits.  In  the  august  pre 
sence  of  the  dollar  all  men  are  equal.  It  is  not  this 
man  who  graduated  at  Harvard  against  that  man  who 
herded  swine ;  it  is  this  man's  credit  and  capital  as 
set  down  in  '  Bradstreet ' — an  amiable  little  work  which 
gives  the  money  value  of  every  business  man  in  the 
States,  and  computes  the  degree  of  trust  that  may  be 
reposed  in  his  signed  paper — as  against  that  other 
man's. 

But  all  this  is  hideously  materialistic.  No  doubt : 
only  what  do  you  mean  by  materialistic  ?  In  a  sense, 
which  I  will  explain  in  a  page  or  two,  the  Americans 
appear  to  me  the  most  materialistic  people  in  the 
world.  But  as  for  the  love  of  money,  I  don't  think 
they  are  down  with  it  any  worse  than  any  other 
people.  I  still  think,  as  I  said  at  the  very  beginning, 
that  it  is  not  the  dollars  they  worship  but  the  facul 
ties  that  got  them.  The  man  who  has  made  money 
in  this  country  has  attained  what  is  the  one  aim  of 
ninety-nine  out  of  every  hundred  of  his  countrymen. 
He  has  had  the  ability  to  do  what  everybody  is  trying 
to  do.  Is  it  wonderful  that  he  is  respected?  It 
would  be  wonderful  indeed  if  he  were  not. 

Cut  off  from  the  hard-won  civilisation  of  the  Old 
World,  and  left  to  struggle  by  themselves  with  the 


THE   GREAT   GAME.  273 

forest  and  the  prairie,  it  was  inevitable  that  the 
Americans  should  prize  most  highly  those  less  highly- 
organised  qualities  of  the  mind  which  insured  success 
in  the  struggle.  The  others  may  come  with  time.  In 
the  meanwhile  there  is  this  consolation  for  those  who 
go  down.  Failure  may  be  complete,  but  it  is  never 
irredeemable.  In  Europe  a  boy  goes  into  a  bank  ;  he 
may  hate  it,  but  in  the  bank  he  usually  remains.  In 
America  he  will  next  appear  in  a  newspaper  office, 
then  behind  a  draper's  counter,  then  in  Congress,  then 
in  bankruptcy,  and  then  in  a  gold-mine.  You  never 
meet  the  man  who  has  got  a  good  place  and  don't 
mean  to  lose  it.  No  place  is  good  enough  for  the 
American's  estimate  of  his  own  deserts — nor  is  the 
estimate  inexcusable,  for  no  possibility  is  beyond  his 
legitimate  aspiration.  Nobody  is  ever  done  with. 
And  this  applies  to  the  millionaire  as  well  as  to  the 
starveling.  A  man  of  huge  fortune  is  always  break 
ing  out,  like  Mr  Armour,  into  some  new  and  unfamil 
iar  trade.  I  have  met  a  gentleman  who  made  a  large 
fortune  as  an  ironmaster.  One  day  it  occurred  to  him 
to  buy  a  newspaper.  He  did  not  know  small  pica 
from  nonpareil,  and  by  the  time  he  was  mastering  the 
difference  his  fortune  had  melted  away,  and  he  had  a 
mortgage  on  the  house  his  wife  and  children  lived  in. 
He  went  about  his  business  with  an  unmoved  face. 
Why  not?  This  was  his  life.  He  was  playing  the 
great  game  for  the  pleasure  of  playing  it;  and  he 
played  it  and  won  it  like  a  man. 

S 


274 


XXX. 

WAITING. 

NEW  YORK,  November  2. 

I  LANDED  myself  in  New  York  just  in  time  for  the 
biggest  political  demonstration  in  the  world's  history. 
Exactly  how  many  men  turned  out  on  Saturday  to 
parade  for  M'Kinley  and  Gold  it  is  hard  to  estimate. 
The  Silver  partisans  admit  that  more  than  eighty 
thousand  men  marched  in  the  great  procession,  while 
enthusiastic  gold-bugs  put  the  figure  at  nearly  double. 
Probably  a  hundred  to  a  hundred  and  ten  thousand 
would  about  hit  it.  Anyhow,  there  were  so  many  that 
it  hardly  matters  to  an  odd  ten  thousand  how  many 
there  were.  It  was  the  greatest  assembly  of  organ 
ised  men  this  country  has  seen  since  the  muster  of 
Union  veterans  in  Washington  to  disband  after  the 
close  of  the  Civil  War.  It  is  estimated  that  there 
were  more  men  tramping  the  streets  of  New  York 
in  Saturday's  parade  than  there  are  voters  in  the 
States  of  Colorado,  Idaho,  and  Nevada  put  together. 
There  was  every  manner  of  man  in  the  procession: 


MEN,  MEN,  MEN;  FLAGS,  FLAGS,  FLAGS.    275 

millionaires  in  shining  silk  hats,  and  working  men 
in  corduroy  trousers.  The  men  in  one  line  alone 
were  appraised  by  expert  valuers  at  thirty  million 
dollars.  The  head  of  the  procession  reached  the  re 
viewing  stand  in  Madison  Square  at  a  quarter  to 
eleven  in  the  morning;  the  tail  did  not  arrive  until 
half-past  six  in  the  evening.  Looking  from  the  win 
dow  of  the  'Daily  Mail'  office,  Fifth  Avenue  was 
dark  for  miles  with  the  steadily  rolling  lines  of  par- 
aders.  Nobody  ever  saw  so  many  American  flags 
in  one  day.  Every  man  shouldered  this  weapon,  and 
the  blending  of  the  red,  white,  and  blue  made  a  violet 
embroidery  over  the  black  masses. 

As  a  pageant  it  was  far  inferior  to  the  parade  I 
saw  in  Chicago  the  other  day.  There  were  no  gor 
geous  floats  in  yesterday's  procession,  a  huge  gold- 
bug  on  wheels  being  the  nearest  approach  to  that 
sort  of  embellishment.  There  were  few  horsemen, 
and  little  saffron  or  cloth-of-gold.  But  there  were 
more  men.  It  was  hopeless  to  try  and  watch  it. 
You  looked  at  a  mile  or  two  of  it,  went  away,  came 
back,  and  there  were  miles  on  miles  still  filing  past. 
Always  the  same  men,  carrying  the  same  flags.  Yet 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  people  stood  gazing  at  the 
monotonous  marching  all  day.  Tens  of  thousands 
of  men  fell  in  line  under  the  blazing  sun  after  an 
early  breakfast,  and  did  not  disband  till  the  cold 
stars  were  out.  Why  ?  Because  this  solemn  pro 
fession  of  allegiance  was  a  sacrament  of  political 


276  WAITING. 

faith,  and  it  would  have  been  almost  impious  to 
get  ill  and  go  home.  As  the  day  wore  on  the 
multitude  only  became  the  more  enthusiastic.  The 
parade,  which  in  the  morning  was  loosely  coupled 
and  almost  apathetic,  wound  up  at  night  with  salvoes 
of  cheers  and  the  enthusiastic  singing  of  patriotic 
songs.  The  whole  thing  was  prodigious,  crushing, 
final. 

After  the  parade  had  disbanded  thousands  lingered 
round  the  scene  of  it.  They  had  made  the  supreme 
effort  of  the  campaign,  and  had  nothing  left  to  do. 
Many  turned  to  needed  but  injudicious  refreshment. 
At  dead  of  night,  when  rival  Bryan  and  M'Kinley 
meetings  were  held  in  Madison  Square,  the  opposing 
crowds  exchanged  first  arguments,  then  fierce  volleys 
of  cheers  ;  presently  the  cheers  became  insults,  and 
then  the  insults  became  assaults.  The  first  faction- 
fight  of  the  campaign  in  New  York  was  promisingly 
under  way  when  the  police  arrived.  The  New  York 
police  may  have  political  sympathies,  but  duty,  and 
the  pleasure  of  knocking  citizens  about,  transcend  all 
minor  emotions.  The  embattled  hosts  walked  hastily 
and  ingloriously  away  before  the  truncheons.  Each 
party  accuses  the  other  of  provocation,  but  the  real 
instigator  of  the  riot  was  whisky  on  an  empty  stomach. 
Sunday  morning  found  the  streets  still  strewn  with 
fragments  of  the  great  parade.  Early-retiring  citizens 
awakened  in  the  middle  of  the  night  with  a  start  to 
find  the  last  echoes  of  belated  cheers  breaking  round 


WALL  STREET'S  STOCKING.  277 

their  pillows.  It  must  have  been  nearly  daylight 
before  the  police  finally  swept  up  the  scraps,  and  then 
New  York  enjoyed  such  quiet  as  it  ever  gets. 

Yet  even  on  Saturday  night  hundreds  gathered 
quietly  in  the  hotels  of  the  city,  not  discussing,  not 
drinking  —  doing  nothing  but  simply  waiting  the 
result.  New  York  is  holding  its  breath  ready  to 
break  out  in  huzzas  or  lamentations,  according  as  the 
dice  may  fall.  Never  was  so  huge  a  mass  of  people 
so  completely  centred  in  one  thing.  In  Wall  Street 
there  is  no  panic,  but  utter  stagnation.  The  modern 
machinery  of  credit  has  ceased  work,  and  business 
is  set  back  centuries  to  the  primitive  conditions  of 
hoard  and  barter.  Nobody  carries  stock  on  credit, 
nobody  buys,  nobody  lends.  A  man  came  in 
desperately  to  a  leading  lawyer  the  other  day  in 
deathly  want  of  cash.  He  had  two  hundred  thou 
sand  dollars'  worth  of  Government  bonds,  but  nobody 
would  lend  him  a  cent  on  them.  A  Jewish  banker 
put  the  case  well  when  he  said:  "Wall  Street  can 
take  care  of  itself  with  a  gold  standard,  and  it  can 
take  care  of  itself  with  a  silver  standard.  But  the 
devil  of  it  is  getting  from  one  to  the  other.  You  can 
sail  a  boat  above  Niagara,  and  below  Niagara ;  but 
try  to  sail  down  Niagara,  and  where  are  you  ? "  So 
the  Wall  Street  broker  to-day  is  hoarding  his  hidden 
gold  in  a  stocking  like  a  French  peasant. 

To  flat  Sunday  has  succeeded  interminable  Monday. 
Even  to  me  the  suspense,  the  idleness,  has  been  un- 


278  WAITING. 

bearable.  I  could  not  sit  still.  I  wandered  vaguely 
about  the  street  looking  for  something  interesting 
and  not  finding  it.  And  if  it  took  the  unprejudiced 
spectator  in  this  way,  what  about  the  millions  of 
actors  in  the  momentous  drama?  For  them  the 
suspense  is  little  less  than  an  agony.  Their  work 
is  over,  yet  somehow  they  have  had  to  put  in 
twenty -four  hours  without  seeing  the  fruit  of  it. 
It  is  like  the  breathless  interval  between  the  firing 
of  a  cannon  and  the  hearing  of  the  report,  when  every 
second  seems  a  year.  Or  you  may  say  New  York  is 
like  a  besieged  city,  hanging,  heart  in  mouth,  upon 
tidings  that  may  mean  salvation  and  may  mean  ruin. 
It  is  done  now,  and  there  is  nothing  to  do  but  wait. 
Yet  upon  men's  minds  there  presses  a  sickening 
suspicion  that  they  may  have  been  forgotten — some 
effort  left  unmade  which  it  is  now  too  late  to  make. 
New  York  is  pretending  to  go  about  its  business — 
more  for  the  sake  of  giving  itself  an  occupation  than 
in  the  expectation  that  the  pretence  will  impose  upon 
anybody.  The  clamorous  city  roars  according  to  its 
wont,  but  the  roar  rings  hollow  somehow.  Through 
it  all  you  can  hear  New  York's  heart  beat. 

Having  nothing  else  to  talk  about,  people  are  still 
living  on  Saturday's  parade.  "  You'd  have  wanted 
ten  thousand  police  and  soldiers  to  keep  that  crowd 
in  order  in  London,"  I  heard  a  fat  man  say.  It  is 
strange  that  the  travelled  American  seldom  seems  to 
bring  back  the  .same  high  estimate  of  the  orderly 


THE  AFTERMATH  OF  THE  PARADE.       279 

behaviour  of  our  crowds  and  the  moderation  of  our 
police  which  we  congratulate  ourselves  upon.  For 
myself,  I  admit  the  good  behaviour  of  the  American 
crowd  freely,  but  I  also  stoutly  maintain  that  of  ours. 
As  to  police,  though  the  New  York  Irishman  may 
not  be  quite  so  bad  as  he  is  sometimes  painted,  and 
especially  behaves  very  well  to  women,  I  will  back 
ours  for  courtesy  and  self-control  any  day  of  the 
week.  But  what,  am  I  about  to  begin  talking  other 
things  than  politics  on  this  day  ?  We  are  not  here 
to  consider  Saturday's  crowd  as  a  work  of  art,  but 
as  a  M'Kinley  vote  -  machine.  Most  people  say  it 
settled  the  matter.  Of  course  it  didn't :  how  could 
it  ?  What  bearing  had  the  fact  that  a  hundred 
thousand  men  paraded  New  York  to  do  with  the 
rural  vote  of  Indiana?  And  the  last  is  a  vital 
factor ;  the  Republicanism  of  New  York  has  been 
discounted  long  ago.  All  the  same,  you  see  here  the 
psychological  effect  of  the  great  demonstration.  If 
it  has  done  nothing  else,  it  has  given  men  confidence, 
and  persuaded  the  waverer  that  by  voting  for  M'Kin- 
ley  he  will  put  himself  on  the  winning  side. 

Musing  thus,  I  thought  I  would  go  across  Broadway 
to  my  old  acquaintance,  Mr  St  John,  at  the  Demo 
cratic  headquarters,  and  see  what  he  had  got  to  say. 
There  is  no  great  profit  in  visits  to  headquarters,  for 
they  will  only  tell  you  what  they  think  good  for  you, 
and  what  they  think  good  for  you  you  can  read  in 
every  newspaper.  But  I  found  Mr  St  John  genuinely 


280  WAITING. 

and  incurably  optimistic.  Not  a  doubt  of  Mr  Bryan's 
election  !  Illinois  in  particular  quite  certain !  In  the 
latest  table  given  out  by  Senator  Jones,  the  Demo 
cratic  chairman,  at  Chicago,  Illinois  was  classed  as 
doubtfuL  Now  as  no  chairman's  estimate  was  ever 
known  to  err  on  the  side  of  moderation,  this  means 
that  Illinois  is  given  up  as  lost.  But  Mr  St  John 
would  not  hear  of  it.  "  We  shall  carry  Illinois,"  he 
cried,  cheerfully.  "  Shall  you  carry  New  York  ? "  I 
asked,  not  without  irony.  "  Yes,"  he  began — "  but 
no ;  I  won't  say  that.  But  I  do  say  we  shall 
astonish  a  great  many  people.  I'm  not  going  on 
figures;  I  don't  care  a  hang  about  figures.  What  I 
go  by  is  this.  This  is  a  great  popular  moment,  and 
the  most  experienced  canvasser  can't  estimate  or 
measure  its  impetus.  Why,  take  the  case  of  Henry 
George  when  he  ran  for  Mayor  in  1886.  On  paper 
he  hadn't  got  a  chance,  but  he  very  nearly  got  in. 
Kemember  that  George  is  working  on  our  side  in 
this  election.  Why,  I  heard  something  the  other  day 
about  a  bank  here.  Its  president  is  a  great  M'Kinley 
man — makes  speeches  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  Now, 
the  fifty  clerks  in  that  bank  probably  all  marched  in 
the  parade  on  Saturday.  But  I  know  that  out  of  the 
fifty  only  eight  mean  to  vote  for  M'Kinley." 

Undeniably  there  is  something  in  Mr  St  John's 
point  of  view.  That  is  not  a  mere  fancy  of  my  own ; 
it  is  proved  by  the  attitude  of  many  of  the  hottest 
believers  in  M'Kinley's  chance.  If  ever  there  was  a 


MR  BRYAN'S  CAMPAIGN.  281 

certainty  on  the  book,  this  election  is  a  certainty  for 
M'Kinley.  But  yet  any  element  of  the  incalculable 
and  unexpected  must  make  in  favour  of  Bryan.  The 
influential  men  who  have  gained  support  for  the  gold 
candidate  are  not  quite  so  sure  of  their  influence  after 
all.  The  votes  are  promised  all  right,  and  totted  up 
in  the  Republican  forecasts.  But  I  have  met  more 
than  one  Kepublican  who  has  frankly  owned  that  he 
will  feel  more  comfortable  when  the  votes  have  been 
given  and  counted.  Nobody  can  see  how  it  is  pos 
sible  for  Mr  Bryan  to  win,  and  yet  nobody  would  be 
surprised  if  he  did. 

No  doubt  a  good  deal  of  this  is  due  to  the  extra 
ordinary  personal  campaign  that  Mr  Bryan  has  made. 
Nobody  quite  knows  what  he  is  doing  in  the  middle 
States — whether  he  is  wasting  his  breath  or  turning 
votes  by  the  thousand.  In  any  case,  he  is  fighting 
up  to  the  last  moment,  and  fighting  this  very  day  as 
resolutely  and  as  vigorously  as  he  fought  on  the  day 
of  his  nomination.  Win  or  lose,  he  has  done  his  best, 
p.nd  perhaps  made  the  finest  campaign  since  election 
campaigns  were  invented.  Every  newspaper  is  full 
of  the  thousands  of  miles  he  has  travelled,  the  hun 
dreds  of  speeches  he  has  made,  the  millions  of  electors 
who  have  heard  the  sound  of  his  voice,  and  the  billions 
of  words  that  voice  has  uttered.  Consider  it  merely 
as  a  feat  of  physical  endurance,  and  this  iron  man 
must  be  pronounced  one  of  the  phenomena  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  Through  it  all  he  has  not  lost 


282  WAITING. 

one  meal  or  one  night's  sleep.1  But  it  has  wanted 
courage  as  well  as  strength.  He  has  seen  the  en 
thusiasm  of  his  first  day's  candidature  fade  away  into 
the  M'Kinley  reaction.  He  must  know  he  has  been 
struggling  to  stem  a  torrent  instead  of  floating  on  it 
— and  that  to  the  demagogic  temperament  is  no  light 
trial.  And  he  has  been  struggling  alone.  Not  one 
Democrat  of  high  reputation  has  come  forward  on 
his  side.  His  Altgelds  and  his  Tillmans  are  notori 
ous,  indeed,  but  their  notoriety  has  done  him  more 
harm  than  good.  His  loneliness  is  the  blackest  omen 
against  him,  since,  if  astute  men  of  the  Hill  stamp 
thought  he  were  going  to  win,  they  would  be  found 
at  his  side  to  share  the  spoil.  He  has  fought  the 
battle  alone,  and  he  has  fought  it  with  an  elastic 
toughness,  an  unshaken  courage,  an  unflagging  fer 
vour,  that  lifts  him  to  the  highest  rank  of  popular 
leaders  alongside  of  Gladstone  and  Gambetta. 

With  Monday's  dusk  New  York  has  awakened  from 
its  two  days'  torpor.  As  darkness  cleared  the  traffic 
from  the  streets  you  might  see  here  or  there  a 
dense  knot  of  men  gathered  at  a  corner.  You  would 
have  said  a  fight  or  a  fit.  Hurrying,  up  you  found 
nothing  but  two  champions  discussing  the  currency 
in  semi -public.  The  listeners  now  applauded,  now 
mocked,  but  not  one  would  tear  himself  away.  The 
hall  of  the  Hoffman  House,  where  by  good  luck  rather 

1  On  the  day  after  his  defeat  he  ate  a  beef -steak  and  four  eggs  for 
breakfast.  That  is  what  I  call  a  man. 


AT  THE  HOFFMAN  HOUSE.          283 

than  judgment  I  put  up,  presented  a  mixture  of 
Tattersall's  King  on  a  Derby  Day  and  the  lobby  of 
the  House  of  Commons  on  the  fall  of  a  Ministry. 
There  were  in  the  jostling  crowd  bookmakers,  par 
sons,  financiers,  and  clerks,  men  with  white  ties  and 
men  with  no  collars.  You  could  not  move,  much 
less  hear  yourself  speak,  and  by  reason  of  the  press 
they  had  ceased  to  serve  cocktails  at  the  bar.  In 
the  centre  of  the  crowd  were  groups  of  political 
plungers,  and  now  and  again  above  the  general 
tumult  you  heard  their  raucous  voices  calling  the 
latest  odds  on  M'Kinley.  Yet  there  was  very  little 
betting.  The  contest  was  considered  all  one  way, 
and  though  no  end  of  information  could  be  found 
that  whole  streets  full  of  working  men  had  resolved 
to  vote  for  Bryan,  the  Eepublicans  had  established 
a  funk.  So  the  betting  languished,  and  interest  in 
offered  odds  palled,  till  the  crowd  fell  back  on 
the  exhausting  but  unexhausted  currency  discussion. 
Several  Free  Silver  meetings  disengaged  themselves. 
The  Gold  men  responded  to  their  vociferous  argu 
ments  with  an  occasional  jeer,  but  mostly  contented 
themselves  with  the  unanswerable  repartee  of  putting 
up  money  to  bet.  The  mass  thinned  out  towards 
midnight,  but  again  the  crowds  gathered  outside  and 
rang  the  chimes  of  the  small  hours  with  peals  of 
cheers  rolling  down  the  echoing  streets. 
To-morrow ! 


UNIVERSITY 

or 


284 


XXXT. 

THF,     DAY. 

NEW  YORK,  November  4. 

THE  belated  demonstrators  were  hardly  silent  when 
the  day  of  destiny  dawned.  And  almost  before  it 
had  actually  dawned  the  day's  work  had  begun.  The 
polls  open  at  six  o'clock  in  New  York,  and  even  b) 
that  hour  millionaire  and  beggar  had  lined  up  in  front 
of  the  polling-booths  as  if  they  were  the  pit-door  of 
a  theatre.  The  strain  of  the  last  few  days  had  be 
come  no  longer  bearable.  Nobody  could  lie  abed 
when  the  moment  for  action  had  at  last  come.  Un- 
breakfasted,  unwashed,  unclothed,  all  hastened  to  get 
the  momentous  vote  off  their  chests.  The  clustering 
figures  in  the  half-daylight,  muffled  in  overcoats,  re 
called  an  Oxford  undergraduates'  eight  o'clock  roll- 
call. 

It  must  be  explained  that  Americans  do  not  vote, 
like  us,  in  a  public  building.  During  the  last  few 
days  broad,  dark-green  wooden  sheds  have  squatted 
on  the  streets  all  over  the  city.  In  these  tabernacles 


A   DESERTED    CITY.  285 

they  take  the  sacrament  of  citizenship.  In  the  poorer 
quarters,  where  the  streets  are  narrower,  shops  are 
consecrated  to  the  solemn  rite.  Usually  cigar-stores 
are  chosen — sometimes,  with  genial  irony  for  the  de 
feated  candidate,  an  undertaker's. 

By  the  time  the  city  ordinarily  wakes  up  nearly 
half  the  votes  had  been  cast.  Already  New  York,  its 
duty  done,  had  settled  itself  down  to  enjoy  a  holiday 
under  the  clear  sunlight  of  an  Indian  summer's  day. 
The  polling  -  places  were  soon  deserted,  but  for  a 
little  knot  of  party  watchers,  tallymen  all  decked  out 
with  ribbons  like  prize  shorthorns,  and  the  police. 
Earely  a  candidate  or  some  high  party  official  bustled 
up  on  a  tour  of  inspection ;  then  the  oracle  of  the 
voice  of  the  people  sank  back  into  dumbness  again. 
The  party  headquarters  were  no  longer  crowded  as  in 
past  days.  Only  a  few  devotees  were  there,  keeping 
lists  and  receiving  reports  from  the  poll  ing -places. 
Tammany  Hall  itself  was  half  empty,  and  almost 
silent.  Wall  Street  and  the  other  business  quarters 
were  ablaze  with  the  national  colours,  but  there  were 
no  business  men.  The  Broadway  shops  and  restaurants 
were  all  decked  out  in  bunting,  but  all  were  closed. 
Fifth  Avenue  was  as  depopulated  as  in  the  middle  of 
August.  The  mean  streets  of  the  East  Side  were  filled 
with  unshaven  men,  slatternly  women,  and  barefooted 
children.  But  this  assemblage  was  merely  because 
here  the  street  takes  the  place  of  the  country  and  the 
seaside.  Only  at  rare  street  corners  stood  three  or 


286  1HE   DAY. 

four  men,  with  puckered  faces,  wondering  why  Mike 
OTlaherty  had  not  voted  yet.  Meanwhile  crowds  of 
people  were  streaming  to  the  ferries  and  the  railway 
stations,  seeking  the  country.  The  streets  gradually 
filled  with  citizens'  wives  and  children,  all  in  their 
Sunday  clothes.  It  was  a  Sabbath  without  any  Sab 
batarianism.  You  would  say  the  city  was  quietly 
enjoying  victory  instead  of  being  in  the  midst  of 
battle. 

But  this  is  a  day  of  vast  activity  for  the  street 
Arabs  of  New  York.  It  is  their  day  of  days  in  the 
four  long  years.  From  early  dawn  they  began  to 
collect  every  available  sort  of  material  for  bonfires. 
Their  Guy  Fawkes'  day  is  a  movable  feast,  dependent 
on  the  day  of  election.  All  day  long  they  steal 
barrels,  and  planks,  and  straw,  and  boxes,  under  the 
very  noses  of  the  tolerant  proprietors.  Impatient  en 
thusiasts  had  little  fires  crackling,  in  full  sunlight  and 
in  the  middle  of  the  street,  as  early  as  nine  o'clock. 
For  the  rest,  the  only  signs  of  public  excitement  were 
the  dense  black  masses  of  people  fringing  the  pave 
ment  opposite  all  the  newspaper  offices — awaiting  tid 
ings  not  yet  due  for  six  hours.  Altogether  it  was  a 
day  of  waiting,  but  of  waiting  that  was  endurable 
compared  with  yesterday's.  To-day  each  man  had 
done  all  that  in  him  lay,  and  he  could  await  the  result 
with  clean-conscienced  resignation. 

But  the  polling  was  hardly  over  when  the  supreme 
day  became  merged  in  a  supreme  night.  It  was  a  day 


THE   DIGNITY   OF   DEMOCRACY.  287 

for  work,  which  had  been  done  in  perfect  order,  and 
with  a  calmness  and  a  dignity  that  fitted  the  moment 
ous  occasion.  Mr  Koosevelt,  New  York's  Chief  Com 
missioner  of  Police,  told  me  that  this  was  the  most 
peacefully  conducted  election  in  American  history. 
Hardly  an  arrest  was  made  all  day.  The  very  Italian 
roadmakers  and  the  Yiddish  hucksters  put  011  charac 
ter  for  one  day,  and  carried  themselves  as  citizens 
worthy  of  their  citizenship. 

But  the  night  was  given  to  a  gluttony  of  sensation, 
after  the  suspense  between  triumph  and  despair  in  the 
last  hour.  Before  the  polls  closed,  at  five  o'clock,  New 
York  had  settled  down  to  an  emotional  debauch.  The 
city  was  drained  dry  of  voters  early  in  the  day,  and 
the  closest  polling  organisation  hardly  squeezed  out  a 
single  elector  in  that  last  hour.  Now  to  see  if  the 
great  struggle  of  six  months  should  issue  in  a  burst  of 
prosperity  or  in  collapse  and  ruin ! 

Hours  before  any  news  was  possible  great  crowds 
had  massed  in  the  City  Hall  Park  and  in  Printing 
House  Square.  Here  are  most  of  the  great  news 
paper  offices,  packed  together  even  closer  than  in 
London.  One  big  building  is  shared  by  both  Silver 
and  Gold  newspapers.  Caricatures,  separated  only  by 
a  window,  showed  any  given  statesman  as  the  saviour 
of  his  country  or  as  an  embezzler  of  public  funds, 
according  to  the  taste  of  the  exhibitor  and  the  observer. 
The  stereopticon  bulletin  shows  being  so  close  to 
gether,  they  could  be  depended  on  for  an  entertaining 


288  THE  DAY. 

rivalry  of  picturesque  sensation,  which  New  York 
resolved  to  enjoy  to  the  full.  The  towering  face  of 
the  'World'  building  was  masked  by  an  enormous 
screen,  and  half-a-dozen  other  newspaper  buildings 
were  almost  as  generously  furnished  with  raw  material 
for  the  cartoons  and  bulletins  that  should  move  to 
laughter  or  to  tears.  One  could  hardly  move  there 
by  five  o'clock ;  by  six,  when  the  first  meagre  results 
began  to  come  in,  the  crush  was  almost  terrifying  in 
its  immeasurable  and  ungovernable  force. 

Meanwhile,  inside  the  newspaper  offices  the  most 
important  work  in  four  years  was  progressing  fever 
ishly.  Only  highly  authenticated  visitors  were  per 
mitted  inside  to-night.  To  realise  the  work  before  the 
newspaper  you  must  remember  that  thirteen  millions 
of  votes  were  coming  in  from  points  three  thousand 
miles  apart,  some  of  them  three  hours  in  time  behind 
the  others.  On  the  basis  of  whatever  flimsy  indica 
tions  arrived  before  press-time  the  paper  must  cal 
culate  a  result  for  the  whole  country,  whose  accuracy 
might  make  or  mar.  The  biggest  room  in  each  office 
was  laid  out  with  trestle-tables,  whereat  sat  men  adding, 
subtracting,  and  multiplying.  Each  man  had  in  his 
head,  or  at  least  on  paper  at  his  side,  the  vote  of  1892 
in  every  county  and  precinct,  in  order  to  estimate  from 
the  early  returns  of  the  smallest  village  the  probable 
trend  and  force  of  the  stream  sweeping  over  the  whole 
country.  The  opinion  of  thousands  of  counties  had 
thus  to  be  dealt  with,  and  the  complexity  and  magni- 


IN   CITY   HALL   PARK.  289 

tude  of  the  task  strained  every  rivet  in  the  newspaper 
organisation.  The  scene  inside  the  office  was  a  com 
bination  of  mad  confusion  and  perfect  harmony.  A 
little  army  of  boys  were  flying  with  telegraphic  results 
to  the  calculators,  and  flying  back  with  each  result 
reduced  to  its  proper  place  in  the  general  scheme. 
The  calculators  mopped  their  brows  without  speaking, 
and  calculated  fiercely. 

The  anxious  crowd  outside  surged  denser  and  more 
terrible  in  its  ungovernable  weight.  Thousands  stood 
craning  their  necks  to  the  walls  of  the  huge  buildings 
before  them,  faintly  outlined  against  the  deep  sky. 
Search -lights  spun  round  the  horizon,  lighting  up 
signal-kites  floating  aloft.  On  the  screens  appeared 
scenes  shown  by  the  cinematographe,  which  were 
received  with  alternate  delight  and  derision.  When 
the  first  returns  were  shown  the  crowd  lost  mastery 
of  itself.  The  City  Hall  Park  is  cut  up  by  public 
buildings,  with  parallelograms  and  triangles  of  grass. 
The  crowd  broke  against  the  wire  fences,  swept  them 
down,  and  surged  over  the  sacred  enclosures.  It 
could  not  help  it.  The  laws  of  space  and  force  were 
the  only  things  that  had  not  taken  a  night  off  for  the 
election. 

From  the  first  moment  of  the  arrival  of  returns, 
the  direction  of  the  stream  was  clearly  apparent. 
New  York  City,  where  never  before  had  a  majority 
been  given  for  a  Republican  President,  was  going 
steadily  and  surely  for  Mr  M'Kinley.  One  hundred 


290  THE  DAY. 

districts,  two  hundred  districts,  three  hundred  dis 
tricts,  were  heard  from,  and  Mr  M'Kinley  forged 
steadily  ahead,  till  his  majority  in  the  city  was  certain 
to  be  at  least  20,000.  Then  the  serried  masses  began 
to  open  their  lungs,  and  fierce  yells  and  whoops  and 
cheers  crashed  from  side  to  side  of  the  great  square. 

Passing  north-eastward  through  the  city  was  like 
passing  from  a  mill-race  to  a  mill-pool.  The  poverty- 
stricken  streets,  where  three  hours  before  one  could 
hardly  move  for  the  crowds  of  dirty  aliens  lounging 
away  the  holiday  on  the  pavement,  were  now  silent 
and  dark,  save  where  the  chartered  sons  of  the  gutter 
danced  and  whooped  around  the  bonfires.  Early 
in  the  day  these  had  been  made  from  purloined  boxes 
and  barrels;  now  they  were  being  fed  with  straw 
mattresses  and  cheap  furniture.  But  the  adults, 
the  Italians,  Poles,  and  miscellaneous  Yiddishers, 
were  still  under  the  spell  of  their  brief  dignity  of 
citizenship. 

At  the  main  police  office  was  an  election  bureau 
for  receiving  the  first  official  counts  of  the  city  voting. 
The  bare  flagstones  of  the  stairs  rang  with  the  hasty 
heels  of  journalists  scurrying  up  and  down  with 
despatches.  In  the  court-room  was  assembled  a  job 
lot  of  curious  listeners,  and  from  time  to  time  the 
officials  enthroned  on  the  bench  hastily  snatched 
papers  from  hurrying  messengers  and  read  aloud  a 
bulletin  putting  a  fresh  nail  in  the  coffin  of  Bryanism. 
The  listening  loafers  chaffed  the  police  and  indulged 


"THAT   SETTLES  IT."  291 

in  good-natured  horseplay,  while  the  constables  laid 
aside  their  official  majesty  and  worked  away  indus 
triously  with  paper,  pencil,  and  figures  like  ordinary 
commoners.  In  Commissioner  Eoosevelt's  room  was 
a  tape  telegraph-machine,  ticking  away  feverishly. 

Now  began  the  announcements  of  voting  in  the 
country  outside  of  New  York.  Chicago  came  along, 
swinging  heavily  to  M'Kinley.  Then  came  Kentucky, 
and  like  portents,  in  crushing  sequence,  from  East 
and  West  and  South.  "  That  settles  it,"  snapped  out 
a  hard  sharp  voice,  at  the  announcement  of  the 
certain  defeat  of  Governor  Altgeld  in  Illinois,  and 
smiles  wreathed  the  hard  bitter  face  of  an  old  in 
spector  standing  beside  the  instrument.  Word  quickly 
ran  along  the  sentinels  in  the  corridors  and  on  the 
stairs  of  the  downfall  of  the  enemy  of  the  law.  The 
telegraph  clicked  more  breathlessly,  the  official  roared 
out  the  results  more  lustily,  the  journalists  scurried 
about  more  wildly  as  the  returns  from  everywhere 
came  tumbling  over  each  other,  all  pointing  the  same 
way. 

Thence  I  went  up  deserted  Broadway  to  Madison 
Square.  Here  a  dense  crowd  was  packed  across  the 
thoroughfare  before  the  bulletin-boards  of  the  up-town 
newspaper  offices.  Here  doubt  was  dispelled  in  a 
frenzy  of  triumph.  Many  of  the  announcements  were 
premature  and  incorrect,  but  enough  was  quickly 
known  to  send  the  watchers  mad,  and  the  air  was 
torn  with  cheers.  But  loud  above  the  cheers  and  the 


292  THE  DAY. 

crackle  of  laughter  that  swept  the  crowds  when  the 
stereoptician  joked,  above  the  grinding  of  the  cable- 
cars  elbowing  their  way  and  banging  their  gongs, 
arose  the  deafening  blast  of  tin  horns,  which  were 
sold  by  hundreds  in  the  crowd.  At  each  new  triumph 
of  Republicanism  the  ear-splitting  bray  of  these  tin 
trumpets  boomed  out.  This  was  the  form  which  the 
voice  of  the  people  chose  to  manifest  its  exultation. 
White  men  and  black  men,  sober  men  and  hilarious 
men,  young  men,  staid  middle- age  and  grey-beards, 
matrons  and  maidens,  all  were  gravely  tootling  these 
babies'  tin  trumpets.  Everybody  was  too  exultant  to 
care  whether  lie  behaved  like  an  infant  or  not.  There 
was  no  escape  from  the  infernal  din. 

At  the  Republican  headquarters  I  found  the  worn, 
pale,  sleepless  heroes  of  the  fight  summoning  their  last 
energies  to. revel  without  affectation  of  self-control  in 
the  brilliancy  of  their  victory.  Here,  again,  of  course, 
were  the  newspaper-men,  gathering  the  threads  of 
information  despatched  to  headquarters,  and  weaving 
them  together  into  the  complete  tale  of  triumph.  But 
hardly  anybody  was  now  concerned  to  add  and  com 
pare  returns.  White-bearded,  frock-coated  men  were 
rushing  about  shaking  hands  with  everybody  in 
sight.  The  rooms  echoed  with  the  ripple  of  light- 
hearted  girls'  laughter.  A  little  army  of  waiters  was 
perspiringly  trying  to  keep  pace  with  the  unquench 
able  demand  for  champagne.  Distracted  with  delight, 
the  solid  pillars  of  Sound  Money  could  only  laugh 


FRENZY.  293 

and  babble,  and  hurry  from  the  tape  to  the  window 
and  from  the  window  back  to  the  tape.  Their  joy 
would  not  allow  them  to  keep  still  one  second. 

At  Democratic  headquarters  things  were  very  differ 
ent.  Here  was  only  lassitude  after  effort.  There  was 
no  victory  or  champagne  to  fillip  it  into  a  flicker  of 
animation.  Everything  and  every  one  was  most 
gloomily  silent,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  un 
conquerable  optimists,  who  were  still  vainly  trying 
to  demonstrate  that  maturer  returns  might  retrieve  all. 
Tammany  Hall  gave  up  the  struggle  early,  and  by 
eleven  o'clock  was  black  and  voiceless.  Jeering 
enemies  encamped  on  its  steps  undisturbed  and  un 
answered. 

Passing  on  to  the  University  Club,  I  found  every 
member  present  exulting  and  dancing  like  schoolboys, 
as  a  waiter  read  item  after  item  of  the  colossal  pile  of 
victories.  These  fine  gentlemen  of  New  York  cried  for 
cheers  for  M'Kinley,  hurled  stentorian  congratulations 
at  entering  friends,  clasped  each  other  round  the  waist 
by  threes  and  fours,  and  waltzed  round  the  room  under 
the  approving  smiles  of  the  head- waiters. 

My  next  task  was  to  fight  my  way  up  to  Herald 
Square.  Here  were  two  cinematographies  at  work, 
but  by  now  the  people  hardly  deigned  to  glance  at 
them.  This  was  the  climax.  No  longer  was  the 
crowd  made  up  of  men  and  women,  but  of  rejoicing 
machines.  The  wide  square  was  one  riot  of  de 
lirium.  The  crowd  spread  itself  over  the  tram  rails, 


294  THE    DAY. 

and  almost  sought  to  push  back  the  crawling  cable- 
cars  which  attempted  to  jostle  them  from  an  im 
mediate  view  of  the  next  undreamed-of  success  posted 
on  the  bulletins.  Now  rockets  and  Roman  candles 
were  blazing  on  every  side.  Gunpowder  flared,  bands 
crashed,  bugles  rang;  overhead  the  late  trains  puffed 
and  clattered,  and  above  all  rang  volleys  of  cheers 
and  the  interminable  discordant  blare  of  tin  trumpets, 
all  blended  in  a  furious  jangle  of  jubilation.  The 
whole  place  was  mad,  demoniac,  inspired  with  a 
divine  frenzy. 

But  by  now  it  was  well  past  midnight.  Reports 
came  rarely;  the  lights  be^an  to  go  out;  gangs  of 
young  men  with  linked  arms  charged  and  split  up 
the  thinning  crowd.  The  elevated  trains  and  the 
cable-cars  making  for  the  northern  suburbs  looked  as 
though  human  bees  had  swarmed  over  them.  Every 
inch  of  floor  and  outside  platform  had  a  foot  clinging 
precariously  to  it.  People  were  even  hanging  desper 
ately  from  the  brakes  and  couplings.  So  New  York 
began  to  empty,  the  vast  assemblage  falling  asleep 
with  the  reaction  from  an  excitement  that  was  almost 
too  intense  for  life.  And  through  the  crowd  came 
pushing  a  man  with  matted  hair  crying  the  morning 
papers. 

The  night  of  nights  was  justified  of  its  supreme 
destiny.  The  expectation  had  been  the  tensest  for  a 
generation,  but  the  realisation  had  risen  to  it  and  had 


THE   DAWN.  295 

overwhelmed  it.  The  last  screams  of  jubilation  grew 
fainter  and  more  distant;  gradually  the  glamour  of 
the  dream  wore  off,  and  the  city  paled  to  ordinary 
dawn  and  ordinary  day.  New  York  was  her  daily 
self  again,  with  the  most  stirring  night  of  her  recent 
fate  behind  her. 


296 


XXXII. 

THE    OUTLOOK. 

Ss.  AUGUSTA  VICTORIA,  November  7. 

WELL,  it  is  all  over,  and  William  M'Kinley  is  to  be 
the  twenty-fifth  President  of  the  United  States.  What 
then  ?  What  has  been  accomplished  by  the  six  months 
of  stress  and  conflict  ?  What  is  to  be  the  ultimate 
fate  of  free  silver  and  free  trade  ?  Has  the  incoming 
surge  of  anarchy  been  swept  back  for  good,  or  is  it 
retiring  only  to  thunder  in  again  with  tenfold  violence 
on  some  future  day,  to  engulf  industry  and  order,  pro 
tection  and  free  trade,  labour  and  capital  together  ? 

Almost  the  last  words  of  Mr  Bryan  before  the 
declaration  of  the  polls  were  to  the  effect  that  if  he 
were  beaten  this  time  he  was  ready  to  begin  work  at 
once  on  the  campaign  of  1900.  He  has  been  beaten, 
and,  being  a  man  of  indomitable  energy  and  un 
quenchable  faith,  news  comes  that  he  is  all  ready  to 
fulfil  his  word.  But  the  most  indomitable  general 
cannot  fight  battles  without  soldiers,  nor  yet  with 
mutinous  soldiers.  The  doctrine  of  free  coinage  lay 


HOW   THE   FIG  11 T   WAS   LOST.  297 

never  really  at  the  heart  of  the  rank  and  file  of  Demo 
crats.  In  the  Rocky  Mountains  every  man,  Demo 
crat  or  Republican,  was  white-hot  for  it,  because  it 
meant  more  mines  working,  more  miners  wanted  to 
work  them,  and  more  money  to  be  spent  generally. 
The  western  farmer  was  for  free  coinage  because  he 
thought  it  offered  a  hope  of  better  prices,  and  no  other 
hope  was  on  his  horizon.  The  South  was  for  free 
silver,  partly  for  the  same  reason  and  partly  because 
the  North  was  against  it. 

But  the  Democrats  of  the  North  and  East  and 
central  States  cared  no  more  for  free  silver  than  the 
rank  and  file  of  English  Radicals  in  1886  cared  for 
Home  Rule.  They  voted  for  it  partly  because  it  was 
the  regular  and  official  programme  of  their  party,  and 
partly  because,  since  the  partial  free  trade  of  the 
Wilson  tariff  had  not  brought  prosperity,  there  was 
nothing  else  handy  to  vote  for.  And  partly  they  did 
not  vote  for  it  at  all.  It  is  in  these  districts,  East  of 
the  Mississippi  and  North  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line, 
that  the  loss  of  Democratic  votes  lost  the  fight  for 
Mr  Bryan ;  it  is  here  that  he  must  seek  to  win  them 
back  if  the  defeat  of  1896  is  to  lead  up  to  the  victory 
of  1900.  The  National  Democrats,  the  schismatics 
who  supported  the  gold  standard,  hoped  that  a  smash 
ing  defeat  this  year  would  throw  the  party  back  into 
their  arms.  They  talked  of  holding  a  convention  in 
Chicago  within  sixty  days  of  the  election  to  reorganise 
the  party  on  a  gold  basis.  Two  days  after  the  election 


298  THE   OUTLOOK. 

proposals  were  actually  on  foot  for  some  such  re 
organisation  in  the  State  of  New  York,  to  include  all 
the  old  leaders,  like  Mr  Cleveland's  personal  following, 
Senator  Hill,  and  others  who  have  stood  out  of  this 
campaign.  But  such  reconciliations,  easy  enough  to 
project,  are  exceedingly  hard  to  bring  to  realisation. 
The  beaten  majority  will  never  come,  cap  in  hand,  to 
the  minority  who  have  purchased  victory  by  deserting 
to  the  enemy.  It  was  found  impracticable  in  Eng 
land,  and  it  is  very  questionable  if  any  number  of 
round-table  conferences  will  bring  it  about  in  the 
United  States. 

The  Free  Silver  Democrats  are  rancorously  bitter 
against  the  Gold  Democrats,  and  the  petty  vote 
realised  by  the  latter  at  the  polls  is  hardly  worth 
eating  humble-pie  for.  If  the  National  Democrats 
could  make  it  clear  to  the  others  that  reunion  would 
afford  a  really  promising  chance  of  victory  in  1900, 
with  attendant  spoils,  there  might  be  something  to 
say.  But  it  is  not  easy  to  see  how  this  is  to  be 
done. 

Failing  this  chance,  there  is  the  free  silver  agitation 
to  go  on  with.  If  Mr  Bryan  is  to  lead  the  next  cam 
paign,  his  obstinate  fanaticism  on  the  subject  of  silver 
will  rule  out  any  other  question  as  the  main  issue. 
Supposing  that  in  1900  the  country  is  in  a  state  of 
commercial  depression,  anything  like  the  depression 
of  this  year,  that  campaign  would  stand  an  admirable 
chance  of  success.  All  over  the  country  people  will 


PROTECTION  ?  299 

have  come  to  think  there  might  have  been  something 
in  free  silver  after  all.  That  is  what  some  of  the 
most  level-headed  Westerners  are  counting  on.  But 
unless  the  North  and  East  are  depressed  in  1900, 
then  it  is  hard  to  see  what  other  device  can  be  used 
to  make  free  coinage  attractive  in  those  regions.  At 
present,  being  blamed  for  this  year's  disaster,  it  is  a 
great  deal  less  popular  than  ever. 

At  any  rate,  the  Democratic  party,  beaten,  divided, 
leaderless,  split  with  mutual  recriminations,  jealousies, 
and  distrusts,  is  done  with  for  the  four  years  of  Mr 
M'Kinley's  term.  It  may  form  up  again  in  face  of  the 
enemy,  as  it  has  often  done  before.  It  will  hardly 
do  so  sooner,  for  we  need  not  take  the  projected  con 
vention  at  Denver  too  seriously.  What  use  will  Mr 
M'Kinley  make  of  the  field  left  clear  to  him  ?  His 
own  political  vision  has  room  but  for  a  single  idea — 
Protection.  No  doubt  there  will  be  influences  to 
make  against  any  extreme  revision  of  the  tariff.  The 
Gold  Democrats  will  urge — indeed,  they  began  it  the 
day  after  the  election — that  Mr  M'Kinley  is  the  elect, 
not  of  a  party,  but  of  the  best  elements  of  the  whole 
nation.  They  will  urge  that  they  were  the  main 
agency  of  his  victory,  and  charge  him  with  black 
ingratitude  if  he  countenances  any  advance  in  protec 
tive  dues  beyond  what  is  at  present  urgently  needed 
to  balance  revenue  and  expenditure. 

Another  influence  against  Protection  will  be  the 
Senate.  It  is  true  that  the  Senate  of  ]  897  will  have, 


300  THE   OUTLOOK. 

on  paper,  a  Republican  majority  of  half-a-dozen  or 
so.  But  this  includes  the  Senators  from  the  silver 
States — Colorado,  Utah,  Nevada,  Idaho,  and  Montana, 
Nominally  Republican,  these  men,  many  of  them  the 
paid  attorneys  of  mining  companies,  are  silver  men 
first,  second,  and  always.  It  is  true  that  they  have 
voted  for  Protection  before,  but  then  they  were  bar 
tering  their  voices  against  Republican  encouragement 
for  bimetallism.  That  game  is  up  now ;  he  who  is  not 
for  silver  is  against  it.  It  remains  to  be  seen  whether 
the  Protectionism  of  these  gentlemen  will  be  as  ready 
to  the  empty  hand  as  it  was  when  the  hand  paid  cash, 
or  at  least  promissory  notes,  for  goods  delivered. 

But  the  coining  President,  by  patronage  and  diplo 
matic  arts,  hopes  to  evade  this  obstacle.  Even  if  he 
fails — and  the  silver  corporations  are  not  children  to 
be  cajoled  with  lollipops — it  is  only  a  case  of  wait 
ing  a  year  or  two.  With  a  handsome  Republican 
majority  in  most  of  the  State  legislatures,  the  satis 
factory  leavening  of  the  Senate  with  Protection  needs 
only  time.  As  for  the  Gold  Democrats,  Mr  M'Kinley 
may  owe  them  much,  but  he  owes  the  industrial  mag 
nates  of  his  own  party  a  great  deal  more.  Theirs  will 
be  ever  the  most  potent  voice  in  his  ear,  and  it  will 
be  ever  suggestive  of  Protection.  Mr  Hanna  alone,  as 
the  personal  payment  of  his  cool  and  unerring  conduct 
of  the  campaign,  might  fairly  claim  a  duty  on  coal. 
But  besides  Mr  Hanna  there  are  hundreds  of  wealthy 
individuals  and  corporations  that  have  almost  the 


LOOKING   FORWARD.  301 

right — at  any  rate  in  the  American  code  of  political 
ethics — to  demand  a  protective  policy  in  return  for 
what  they  have  done  to  secure  this  election.  A  cam 
paign  of  education,  even  though  it  never  outstep  the 
bounds  of  the  most  legitimate  influences,  demands 
vast  resources  to  buy  speakers,  literature,  special 
trains,  and  the  like.  Without  the  funds  supplied 
by  these  men  and  bodies,  the  campaign  just  over 
could  never  have  been  fought.  Their  dollars  won  it. 
They  paid  the  piper;  they  will  call  the  tune. 

If  we  wish  to  look  beyond  1900  down  the  vista  of 
the  twentieth  century,  there  is  doubtless  light  to  be 
derived  from  the  election  of  1896.  Doubtless  there 
is  more  light  than  has  been  thrown  by  any  of  the 
more  recent  elections,  for  at  least  two  of  the  questions 
that  are  likely  to  exert  a  controlling  influence  on  the 
remote  fortunes  of  the  United  States  have  this  year 
been  seen  in  germ.  These  two  dangers — for  dangers 
they  are,  and  some  day  may  be  very  grave  ones — 
arise  respectively  out  of  the  opposition  of  distinct 
localities  and  of  distinct  classes. 

Many  people  have  said  that  the  United  States 
are  too  large  to  exist  permanently  as  one  nation. 
Probably  it  would  be  at  least  as  true  a  statement 
of  the  situation  to  say  that  their  commercial  interests 
are  too  diverse,  and  that  the  whole  nation  is  too 
intently  concentrated  on  the  commercial  to  the  ex 
clusion  of  other  influences  which  might  keep  tln> 
country  together.  No  doubt  distance  has  a  good  deal 


302  THE  OUTLOOK. 

to  do  with  it.  Distance  does  not  necessarily  beget 
antagonism,  but  it  deadens  understanding  and  sym 
pathy.  Hence  there  grows  up  a  feeling  between 
localities — let  us  say  the  big  cities  of  the  East  and 
the  mining  camps  of  the  Rocky  Mountains — analogous 
to  the  feeling  that  the  United  States  entertain  to 
wards  ourselves.  It  is  not  hostility,  but  it  is  a  kind 
of  latent  ill-will,  sedulously  fostered,  which  is  the 
raw  material  of  hostility.  There  is  no  apparent 
reason  for  it,  unless  it  be  jealousy  and  a  kind  of 
half-voiced  resentment  of  the  fact  that  people  who 
are  so  alike  in  most  points,  and  ought  to  be  so  near, 
are  unlike  in  some  points,  and  dwell  so  far  apart. 

Besides  this  vague  dislike  which  comes  of  distance, 
the  somewhat  emulous  and  self-conscious  character  of 
the  American  fosters  jealousies  between  States  and 
cities  which  sometimes  become  almost  hatreds.  Each 
city  sub-consciously  selects  the  rival  nearest  it  in  size 
and  strength  to  vie  with  it  and  to  detest  it.  A  man 
from  New  York  and  a  man  from  Chicago,  a  man  from 
San  Francisco  and  a  man  from  St  Louis,  can  hardly 
meet  without  squabbling  over  the  respective  lordliness 
of  their  homes.  St  Paul  and  Minneapolis,  living  on 
exactly  opposite  sides  of  the  Mississippi,  are  said  to  be 
the  bitterest  rivals  of  all.  This  rivalry  has  its  stimu 
lating  side,  and  the  stimulus  is  very  beneficent.  But 
behind  it  there  remains  the  fact  that  the  West  and 
South,  broadly  speaking,  produce  raw  material,  while 
the  North-East  manufactures  and  exchanges  it.  At 


A  PHANTOM   OF   DANGER.  303 

long  as  business  is  good  this  fact  does  no  harm. 
Indeed,  as  I  have  said,  the  business  relations  between 
buyer  and  seller,  reseller  and  buyer-back-again,  are  a 
powerful  clamp  to  keep  the  country  together.  It  is 
when  the  commercial  interests  of  the  two  tracts  clash, 
or  appear  to  clash,  that  danger  is  in  the  air.  This 
year  for  the  first  time  the  two  sides  stood  embattled 
on  a  direct  commercial  issue.  The  rise  in  wheat  and 
the  general  pick-me-up  dealt  round  to  all  business  by 
Mr  M'Kinley's  victory  have  somewhat  smoothed  the 
defeat  for  West  and  South.  Should  there  come  a  day 
when  the  gain  of  the  one  part  of  the  country  means 
the  dead  unrelieved  loss  of  the  other,  that  day  the 
United  States  will  be  on  the  edge  of  very  deep  peril. 

But  for  myself  I  do  not  see  how  this  day  is  to 
come.  In  the  United  States  themselves  men  have 
mocked  at  the  prediction  throughout,  and  the  event, 
this  time  at  any  rate,  has  proved  them  right.  In 
truth  there  is  no  solid  West,  and  no  prospect  of  it. 
To  suppose  that  the  West  is  seriously  banded  against 
the  East  on  the  silver  question  or  any  other  is  a  com 
plete  delusion.  The  election  returns  dispel  it  in  a 
moment.  Mr  Bryan  carried  most  of  the  States  West 
of  the  Mississippi,  it  is  true.  But  he  did  not  carry 
Iowa,  Minnesota,  North  Dakota,  California,  or  Ore 
gon.  In  South  Dakota,  his  own  Nebraska,  Kansas, 
Wyoming,  and  Washington,  his  majorities  were  small. 
Now,  a  country  so  evenly  divided  can  never  enter 
with  effect  upon  a  civil  war.  Furthermore,  the  com- 


304  THE   OUTLOOK. 

mercial  relations  between  the  two  halves  of  the 
country,  the  East  supplying  manufactures,  the  West 
food-stuffs,  forbid  any  such  internecine  madness.  If 
there  was  no  hint  of  a  fight  this  time,  when  the 
monetary  interests  of  the  two  seemed  diametrically 
opposed,  there  is  not  likely  to  be  next  time,  nor  any 
time  in  the  immediate  future. 

There  remain  the  forces  of  anarchy.  Ever  since 
the  bomb-throwing  in  Chicago  seven  or  eight  years 
ago,  the  United  States,  like  Continental  nations,  have 
rather  lost  their  heads  on  the  subject  of  Anarchism. 
They  see  Anarchists  behind  every  bush.  For  instance, 
Mr  Altgeld  is  labelled  Anarchist  because,  as  Governor 
of  Illinois,  he  pardoned  certain  not  especially  heinous 
Anarchists  who  had  already  spent  several  of  the  best 
years  of  their  lives  in  Joliet  jail.  You  might  as  well 
call  Sir  Matthew  White  Ridley  dynamiter  because  he 
let  out  Dr  Gallagher.  It  is  probably  true  that  what 
were  called  the  anarchistic  features  of  the  Chicago 
platform  —  the  attacks  on  Federal  intervention  in 
State  affairs  and  upon  the  Supreme  Court — were  due 
to  the  personal  spite  of  Governor  Altgeld,  who  had 
come  into  collision  with  the  central  Government 
more  than  once.  But  people  should  have  seen  that 
this  fact  made  them  less,  and  not  more,  portentous ; 
they  were  in  their  origin  petty  and  ridiculous,  and 
in  effect  they  did  the  Chicago  platform  infinitely  more 
harm  than  good. 

They  were  meant  to  reinforce  the  lukewarm  silver 


AMERICAN   INDIVIDUALISM.  305 

sentiment  in  the  working  man  of  the  East.  Thuy 
signally  failed.  The  party  of  hunger  needs  to  be 
offered  stronger  food  than  vague  constitutional  changes, 
which  hold  out  no  prospect  of  bread-and-butter  to 
anybody.  Yet  on  the  side  of  labour,  as  against  capi 
tal,  the  Eastern  working  man  is  certainly  open  to 
incitement.  Some  other  time  the  form  of  appeal 
against  capital  may  be  better  chosen,  and  will  not 
fail.  Americans  have  complained  that  this  is  the 
first  election  in  which  class  has  been  arrayed  against 
class;  it  will  assuredly  not  be  the  last.  Open  war 
fare  between  capital  and  labour  will  be  earlier  and 
bitterer  in  the  United  States  than  in  Europe,  for  the 
sufficient  reason  that  legal  organisation  of  industry 
has  been  left  wholly  wanting.  Little  is  done  by  the 
State;  all  is  left  to  the  initiative  of  the  individual. 
The  owner  of  a  plot  of  ground  in  New  York  or 
Chicago  can  put  up  a  building  of  twenty  storeys,  if 
he  has  the  mind  and  the  capital,  without  troubling 
himself  either  about  his  neighbours'  ancient  lights  or 
the  width  of  the  street.  The  apparent  negligence  is 
explained  partly  by  the  Americans'  horror  of  retard 
ing  mechanical  progress,  and  partly  by  their  reliance 
on  competition.  They  have  cast  overboard  the  law 
as  the  safeguard  of  individual  right,  and  put  them 
selves  under  the  protection  of  competition,  and  of  it 
alone.  Now,  a  trust,  in  its  exacter  acceptation,  is 
the  flat  negation  of  competition.  It  is  a  combination 
of  all  the  producers  of  a  necessary  article  to  regulate 

u 


306  THE   OUTLOOK. 

r 

its  price  to  their  own  profit  and  the  loss  of  the  public. 
And  there  are  far  more  unlikely  things  than  that  the 
battle-cry  of  the  next  election  will  be,  Death  to  the 
trusts ! 

Newspapers  may  exaggerate  the  extent  to  which 
trusts  are  able  to  control  the  prices  of  the  necessities 
of  life.  Absolute  control  of  supply  is  probably  rare ; 
coalitions  among  leading  producers  strong  enough  to 
set  the  tune  to  the  market  are  as  probably  very  com 
mon.  Be  that  so  or  not,  it  is  certain  that  commercial 
concerns  make  frequent,  powerful,  and  successful  com 
binations  to  override  the  public  interest.  One  of  the 
most  odious  forms  of  this  is  a  combination  among 
great  employers  of  labour  —  railway  companies  and 
the  like — to  keep  a  mutual  black  list.  If  a  working 
man  offends  one  of  them,  in  time  of  strike  or  other 
wise,  he  will  get  no  employment  from  any.  Men 
have  changed  their  names  and  disguised  themselves  in 
vain  to  escape  this  omniscient  and  merciless  boycott. 
But  all  such  corporations  are  left  unfettered  in  a  way 
that  to  an  Englishman  appears  almost  a  return  to 
savagery.  The  defencelessness  of  individual  liberty 
against  the  encroachments  of  railway  companies,  tram 
way  companies,  nuisance  -  committing  manure  com 
panies,  and  the  like,  is  little  less  than  horrible.  You 
are  as  much  at  their  mercy  as  in  Germany  you  are  at 
the  mercy  of  the  Government.  Where  regulating 
Acts  are  proposed,  the  companies  unite  to  oppose 
them ;  where  such  Acts  exist,  they  bribe  corrupt  offi- 


THE  VIOLENCE  OF   LABOUR.  307 

cials  to  ignore  them.  When  they  want  any  Act  for 
themselves,  it  can  always  be  bought  for  cash.  They 
maintain  their  own  members  in  legislative  bodies — 
pocket  assemblymen,  pocket  representatives,  pocket 
senators.  In  the  name  of  individual  freedom  and  in 
dustrial  progress  they  are  become  the  tyrants  of  the 
whole  community. 

On  the  other  hand,  labour,  though  most  enviably 
well  off,  judged  by  any  European  standard,  is  becom 
ing  increasingly  discontented  and  violent.  It  is  be 
coming  rare  now  to  find  a  strike  in  which  gunpowder 
and  dynamite  are  not  the  ultimate  appeal.  Lawless 
greed  on  the  one  side  and  lawless  brutality  on  the 
other — the  outlook  frowns.  On  the  wisdom  of  the 
rulers  of  the  country  in  salving  or  embittering  these 
antagonisms — still  more,  on  the  fortune  of  the  people 
in  either  modifying  or  hardening  their  present  convic 
tion  that  to  get  dollars  is  the  one  end  of  life — it  de 
pends  whether  the  future  of  the  United  States  is  to  be 
of  eminent  beneficence  or  unspeakable  disaster.  It 
may  stretch  out  the  light  of  liberty  to  the  whole 
world.  It  may  become  the  Devil's  drill-ground,  where 
the  cohorts  of  anarchy  will  furbish  themselves  against 
the  social  Armageddon.  It  rests  with  themselves. 


308 


XXXIII. 

THE    AMERICAN. 

LONDON,  November  12. 

THE  proudest  moment  of  my  fifteen  thousand  miles  of 
wandering  came  upon  me  in  a  bank  in  Chicago.  As 
I  was  waiting  there  the  policeman  on  duty  approached 
me  stealthily,  as  one  about  to  confide  a  secret  of  deep 
importance. 

"  Are  ye  not  an  Englishman,  sorr  ? "  he  whispered. 

"Yes,"  I  said. 

"I  knew  ut,"  he  responded  with  enthusiasm.  "I 
knew  ut  the  minute  ye  came  through  the  dure.  There 
is  nothing  like  ut  in  the  worrld." 

Howbeit,  there  is  something  very  strangely  like  it, 
and  at  the  same  time  most  strangely  unlike.  That 
is  the  American.  He  does  not  look  like  an  English 
man,  yet  it  is  manifest  at  sight  that  he  cannot  be 
of  any  other  known  breed  of  man.  He  talks  Eng 
lish  —  often  as  if  he  were  trying  to  imitate  Mr 
Eugene  Stratton,  often  with  a  clarity  of  pronuncia 
tion  that  put  me  again  and  again  to  shame.  When 


A   NEW    TEMPERAMENT.  309 

I  was  dictating  to  a  typewriter  and  she  could  not 
understand  what  I  said,  when  at  last  she  caught 
the  word  and  repeated  it,  I  wondered  why  I  could 
not  make  a  vowel  sound  with  the  same  distinctness 
and  purity.  Yet  that  typewriter  could  not  spell ;  for 
the  Americans,  as  I  have  hinted,  are  a  nation  of  but 
superficial  education. 

But  the  essential  difference  which  new  environment 
has  grafted  into  the  English  stock  strikes  deeper  than 
appearance  and  language.  If  I  am  asked  to  give  it 
a  name,  it  is  hard  to  find  one.  The  American  is  a 
highly  electric  Anglo-Saxon.  His  temperament  is  of 
quicksilver.  There  is  as  much  di (Terence  in  vivacity 
and  emotion  between  him  and  an  Englishman  as  there 
is  between  an  Englishman  and  an  Italian.  Yet  curi 
ously  there  is  just  as  much  difference  between  him 
and  the  Italian.  His  emotion  is  not  the  least  like 
that  of  the  Southern  European.  For  behind  the  flash 
of  his  passion  there  shines  always  the  steady  light  of 
dry,  hard,  practical  reason.  Shrewd  yet  excitable, 
hot-hearted  and  cool-headed,  he  combines  the  north 
ern  and  the  southern  temperaments,  and  yet  is  utterly 
distinct  from  either.  He  has  developed  into  a  new 
sort  of  Anglo-Saxon,  a  new  national  character,  a  new 
race. 

The  keynote  of  this  character  is  its  irresistible  im 
pulse  to  impress  all  its  sentiments  externally  by  the 
crudest  and  most  obvious  medium.  The  Americans 
are  the  most  demonstrative  of  all  the  peoples  of  the 


310  THE   AMERICAN. 

earth.  Everything  must  be  brought  to  the  surface, 
embodied  in  a  visible,  palpable  form.  For  a  fact 
to  make  any  effect  on  the  American  mind  it  must 
be  put  in  a  shape  where  it  can  be  seen,  heard, 
handled.  If  you  want  to  impress  your  fellows  you 
must  do  it  not  through  their  reasoning  powers,  but- 
through  the  five  senses  of  their  bodies. 

I  noticed  it  first  in  connection  with  their  way  of 
conducting  an  election.  A  hundred  thousand  men 
are  going  to  vote  for  M'Kinley;  that  is  nothing. 
Put  your  hundred  thousand  men  down  in  Broad 
way,  so  that  we  can  see  them  marching,  hear  them 
shouting;  then  we  will  begin  to  appreciate  the  fact. 
4.nd  the  more  you  give  us  to  see  and  hear  in  the 
way  of  banners  and  bands,  the  more  we  shall  ap 
preciate  it.  The  demonstrative  nature  of  the  race, 
once  discovered  in  this  respect,  soon  appeared  a 
master-key  which  would  unlock  most  of  the  puzzles 
in  the  American.  The  most  patriotic  of  men,  his 
patriotism  seems  always  to  centre  rather  on  his  flag 
than  on  his  country :  he  can  see  the  flag,  but  he 
can't  see  the  country.  Why  does  he  cover  his  per 
son  with  childish  buttons  and  badges  ?  Because  you 
can  see  them,  and  you  can't  see  the  sentiments  in 
his  mind.  Why  does  he  cling  all  his  life  to  the  title 
of  some  rank  or  office  he  held  twenty  years  ago  ? 
You  can  hear  the  title  pronounced,  but  you  can't 
see  the  history  of  his  life.  A  man's  self  is  no  good 
unless.  h§  can  put  a,  big  legible  label  on  it.  Thus, 


THE   ACCUSING    BONE.  311 

ngain,  they  will  not  intrust  their  goods  to  anybody 
without  receiving  a  check — something  you  can  see 
and  jingle  in  your  pocket.  They  do  not  read  Shake 
speare,  but  would  think  it  almost  a  sin  to  visit 
England  without  seeing  Shakespeare's  house.  In 
business  they  are  the  most  unwearied  and  ingenious 
advertisers  in  the  world.  In  dress  they  appear  vain, 
out  of  just  the  same  reverence  for  the  concrete  and 
indifference  to  the  abstract.  No  nation  in  the  world 
is  in  such  bondage  to  fashion  as  democratic  America. 
Her  men  and  women,  young  and  old,  wear  boots  that 
narrow  to  a  sharp  point,  like  skates,  two  inches 
beyond  the  toes;  they  tinker  at  their  faces  with 
complexion-washes  and  nose-machines  as  zealously 
as  some  people  in  England  tinker  at  their  souls.  But 
the  extremest  case  I  met  of  the  appeal  to  the  concrete 
was  a  lawsuit  in  which  parents  claimed  damages  for 
an  assault  on  their  child.  A  kick  had  brought  on 
necrosis  of  the  bone,  and  the  necrosised  bone  was 
duly  produced  in  court  and  handed  round  among  the 
jury.  That  settled  it.  There  was  plenty  of  medical 
evidence  as  to  the  cause  of  death,  but  all  this 
weighed  as  nothing  to  the  sight  and  feel  of  the 
accusing  bone. 

It  is  in  this  sense  that  the  Americans  may  fairly 
be  called  the  most  materialistic  people  of  the  world. 
Materialistic  in  the  sense  of  being  avaricious,  I  do 
not  think  they  are :  they  make  money,  as  I  have 
said,  because  they  must  make  something,  and  there 


312  THE   AMERICAN. 

is  nothing  else  to  make.  But  materialistic,  in  th& 
sense  that  they  must  have  all  their  ideas  put  in 
material  form,  they  unquestionably  are. 

Another  characteristic  which  may  perhaps  be  partly 
explained  on  the  same  theory,  is  the  American  want 
of  thoroughness.  Whether  in  building  a  railway  or 
in  tilling  a  field,  in  enforcing  a  law  or  in  keeping 
an  appointment,  they  are  less  thorough  than  we. 
Everything  is  left,  to  the  English  mind,  half  finished. 
Perhaps  one  reason  is  that  a  certain  amount  has 
been  done ;  there  is  something  to  show ;  the  instinct 
of  display  is  gratified.  Without  waiting  to  perfect 
the  details  that  make  no  show,  the  American  turns 
to  attain  palpable  and  striking  results  elsewhere. 
This  may  not  be  the  whole  explanation.  There  is 
also  the  roving  temperament  innate  in  the  emigrant's 
children.  Still  more  to  the  point  is  the  very  wise  and 
practical  turn  which  forbids  wasting  further  effort 
on  what  will  serve  its  purpose  as  it  is.  This  virtue 
they  have  most  eminently :  except  for  little  foibles 
born  of  the  desire  for  outward  effect,  they  are  most 
free  from  pedantry.  If  the  American  is  less  doggedly 
resolute  and  persevering  than  the  Englishman,  he 
is  proportionately  more  irresistible  and  ingenious  in 
devising  possible  means  to  attain  any  impossible  end. 

To  pass  from  the  manufactory,  and  the  farm,  and 
the  mine,  into  the  home,  it  is  believed  by  people  in 
this  country  that  the  American  still  preserves  the 
private  life  of  the  Puritan,  from  whom,  in  some  not 


NOT   PURITANICAL.  313 

unexaggerated  measure,  he  descends.  But  there  is  a 
good  deal  of  misapprehension  about  this.  As  to  the 
home,  the  Americans  talk  about  it  a  great  deal.  A 
man  never  builds  himself  a  house:  he  builds  himself 
a  home.  But  you  cannot  call  a  people  who  will  never 
be  happy  ten  years  in  the  same  place,  who  build  them 
selves  houses  with  the  view  of  shortly  moving  them 
bodily  somewhere  else,  who  often  voluntarily  live  in 
public  and  comfortless  hotels — you  cannot  call  them 
home-loving  in  the  English  sense.  As  to  Puritanism, 
people  point  to  their  irreproachable  novels.  Yes,  but 
look  at  their  disreputable  newspapers.  They  will 
refuse  to  call  legs  anything  but  limbs,  yet  they  will 
readily  produce  generous  pictures  of  those  limbs  in 
tights.  There  is  no  need  to  go  into  the  evidence,  but 
I  am  satisfied  that  in  point  of  morality  the  Americans 
are  neither  more  nor  less  puritanical  than  ourselves. 
And  the  facts  that  they  are  the  hardiest  of  gamblers 
and  the  most  ingenious  of  blasphemers,  though  far 
from  utterly  damning,  are  hardly  evidence  of  direct 
spiritual  descent  Irorn  the  Puritans.  Still  less  is  the 
more  important  fact  that,  while  often  hide-bound  by 
convention,  America  is  magnificently  free  from  in 
tolerance. 

In  one  virtue  these  men  furnish  a  shining  example 
to  all  the  world — in  their  devoted  chivalry  towards 
their  women.  They  toil  and  slave,  they  kill  them 
selves  at  forty,  that  their  women  may  live  in  luxury 
and  become  socially  and  intellectually  superior  to 


314  THE   AMERICAN. 

themselves.  They  do  it  without  even  an  idea  that 
there  is  any  self-sacrifice  in  it.  Whether  it  is  good 
for  the  women  might  be  doubted,  but  it  is  unspeak 
ably  noble  and  honouring  to  the  men.  The  age  of 
chivalry  is  not  gone ;  until  America  it  never  came. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  picture  is  the  American 
attitude  to  children  and  to  the  old.  With  children 
they  are  merely  foolishly  indulgent,  thus  producing  an 
undisciplined,  conceited,  and  ignorant  youth.  No 
American  is  fit  to  talk  to  until  he  is  thirty,  and  he  re 
tains  all  his  life  a  want  of  discipline,  an  incapacity  for 
ordered  and  corporate  effort.  The  individual  may  be 
the  fresher  and  the  stronger  for  it,  but  it  is  not  pro 
ductive  of  good  government.  With  the  old  the  accusa 
tion  is  graver ;  they  are  shouldered  unmercifully  out  of 
existence.  It  would  be  impossible  in  America  to  find 
a  newspaper  correspondence  like  one  which  appeared 
in  the  '  Daily  Mail '  upon  "  reasonable  correction  "  of 
wives.  But  I  found  in  New  York  a  correspondence 
on  the  open  question  whether  the  old  have  any  right 
to  respect.  Many  of  the  public  thought,  quite  serious 
ly,  they  had  no  right  even  to  existence.  Why,  it  was 
asked,  should  those  who  had  spent  their  lives  in  self- 
indulgence  (that  is,  who  had  not  saved  money)  pre 
sume  to  stand  in  the  way  of  the  self-denying  (or 
money-making)  ?  Away  with  them  !  Now  that  would 
be  impossible  in  England. 

One  explanation  is  that  virtually  there  are  no  old 
in  America  at  all.  The  strenuous  fever  of  life  kills 


IS   HE   DYING   OUT?  315 

the  American  at  fifty  or  so.  An  American  woman  is 
old  at  thirty.  And  certainly  the  climate  helps.  It  is 
not  yet  certain  that  North  America  is  not  the  dead 
liest  white  man's  grave  in  the  world.  For  the  old 
families  die  out;  the  native-born  population  at  the 
last  census  had  not  increased,  but  had  heavily  de 
creased.  Maybe  the  climate  is  a  man-killing  one ;  the 
French-Canadians  breed  prodigiously,  but  it  appears 
from  remains  that  the  country  never  carried  a  popu 
lation  comparable  to  many  areas  of  the  Old  World. 
Partly  it  may  be  that  the  nervous  unrest  of  life  in  the 
States  is  antagonistic  to  the  begetting  of  children  ; 
partly  it  is  the  deliberate  refusal  of  pampered  women 
to  assume  the  responsibilities  of  motherhood.  Both 
these  dangers  are  real  ones.  From  whatever  cause,  the 
old  element,  the  English  element,  the  natural  leaders 
of  the  country,  are  dying  out,  and  the  vacancies  are 
filled  by  contributions  from  every  nation  of  the  earth. 
Will  they  blend  ?  Will  these  tributaries  of  new  blood 
turn  the  stream  of  national  character  into  another 
channel?  It  is  too  early  to  say. 

It  is  entirely  to  be  hoped  not,  for  the  character  of 
the  present  American  is  not  one  to  be  lightly  lost  from 
the  world.  His  worst  fault  is  that  he  dislikes  us. 
But  that — though  it  sound  a  paradox — is  because  he 
respects  us.  Entirely  free  from  personal  self-con 
sciousness,  the  Americans  are  nationally  most  self- 
conscious  ;  they  resent  the  existence  of  a  nation  they 
are  bound  to  respect.  But  that  will  go  with  time. 


316  THE  AMERICAN. 

Meanwhile  the  American  may  make  his  mind  easy 
about  his  country.  It  is  a  credit  to  hirn,  and  he  is  a 
credit  to  it.  You  may  differ  from  him,  you  may  laugh 
at  him ;  but  neither  of  these  is  the  predominant 
emotion  he  inspires.  Even  while  you  differ  or  laugh, 
he  is  essentially  the  man  with  whom  you  are  alwayi 
wanting  to  shake  hands. 


?HB    IV* 


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